Details

Subject(s)

• Astrophysicists—United States—Biography [Browse]
• Baade, Walter 1893-1960 [Browse]

Related name

• Baade, Walter, 1893-1960 [Browse]

Summary note

"Although less well known outside the field than Edwin Hubble, Walter Baade was arguably the most influential observational astronomer of the twentieth century. Written by a fellow astronomer deeply familiar with Baade and his work, this is the first biography of this major figure in American astronomy. In it, Donald Osterbrock suggests that Baade's greatest contribution to astrophysics was not, as is often contended, his revision of Hubble's distance and age scales for the universe. Rather, it was his discovery of two distinct stellar populations: old and young stars. This discovery opened wide the previously marginal fields of stellar and galactic evolution - research areas that would be among the most fertile and exciting in all of astrophysics for decades to come."--Jacket.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-260) and index.

Contents

• 1. The Preparation: Gottingen and Hamburg, 1893-1927 1
• 2. The Path toward the Two Populations: Hamburg, 1927-1931 25
• 3. Before the War: Mount Wilson, 1931-1938 49
• 4. War and a Great Discovery: Mount Wilson, 1939-1947 82
• 5. Young Stars and Old: Palomar and Princeton, 1948-1953 112
• 6. Radio Astronomy and the Size of the Universe: Palomar and Pasadena, 1948-1958 147
• 7. Telling the Good News: America and Europe, 1953-1959 177
• 8. The Finale and After: Australia and Gottingen, 1959-1960 200.

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ISBN

• 069104936X ((alk. paper))
• 9780691049366 ((alk. paper))

LCCN

2001021129

OCLC

45806463

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