Antonia Maury

Antonia Maury
BornMarch 21, 1866
DiedJanuary 8, 1952(1952-01-08) (aged 85)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materVassar College
AwardsAnnie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy (1943)
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy
InstitutionsHarvard College Observatory
Academic advisorsMaria Mitchell

Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury (March 21, 1866 – January 8, 1952) was an American astronomer who was the first to detect and calculate the orbit of a spectroscopic binary. She published an important early catalog of stellar spectra using her own system of stellar classification, which was later adopted by the International Astronomical Union. She also spent many years studying the binary star Beta Lyrae. Maury was part of the Harvard Computers, a group of female astronomers and human computers at the Harvard College Observatory.

Antonia Maury was awarded the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1943. William Wilson Morgan, one of the developers of the MK system of stellar classification, which builds upon her work, has said that he considers Antonia Maury "for me, the single greatest mind that has ever engaged itself in the field of the morphology of stellar spectra."[1]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Vassar was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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