25 Facts About Harlow Shapley

Harlow Shapley was an American scientist, head of the Harvard College Observatory, and political activist during the latter New Deal and Fair Deal.

Harlow Shapley was born on a farm five miles outside Nashville, Missouri, to Willis and Sarah Harlow Shapley.

Harlow Shapley went to school in Jasper, Missouri, but not beyond elementary school.

Harlow Shapley worked as a journalist after studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter for the Daily Sun in Chanute, Kansas, and intermittently for the Times of Joplin, Missouri.

Harlow Shapley returned to complete a six-year high school program in 1.5 years, graduating as class valedictorian.

In 1907, Harlow Shapley went to the University of Missouri to study journalism.

Harlow Shapley was instrumental in moving astronomy away from the idea that Cepheids were spectroscopic binaries, and toward the concept that they were pulsators.

Harlow Shapley realized that the Milky Way Galaxy was far larger than previously believed, and that the Sun's place in the galaxy was in a nondescript location.

Harlow Shapley took the side that spiral nebulae are inside our Milky Way, while Curtis took the side that the spiral nebulae are "island universes" far outside our own Milky Way and comparable in size and nature to our own Milky Way.

However, Harlow Shapley's actual talk and argument given during the Great Debate were completely different from the published paper.

Historian Michael Hoskin says "His decision was to treat the National Academy of Sciences to an address so elementary that much of it was necessarily uncontroversial", with Harlow Shapley's motivation being only to impress a delegation from Harvard who were interviewing him for a possible offer as the next Director of Harvard College Observatory.

At the time of the debate, Harlow Shapley was working at the Mount Wilson Observatory, where he had been hired by George Ellery Hale.

Harlow Shapley is known to have opposed Edwin Hubble's observations that there are additional galaxies in the universe other than the Milky Way.

Harlow Shapley fiercely critiqued Hubble and regarded his work as junk science.

One of the first astronomers to believe in the existence of galaxy superclusters, Harlow Shapley later discovered a large and distant example, which was later named the Harlow Shapley Supercluster.

Harlow Shapley served as director of the HCO from 1921 to 1952.

On November 14,1946, Harlow Shapley appeared under subpoena by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in his role as member of the Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, which HCUA described as a "major political arm of the Russophile left".

In March 1949, Harlow Shapley chaired the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.

In 1950, Harlow Shapley was instrumental in organizing a campaign in academia against Worlds in Collision by Russian expatriate psychiatrist Immanuel Velikovsky.

Harlow Shapley was one of the signatories of the agreement to convene a convention for drafting a world constitution.

Harlow Shapley married Martha Betz in April 1914, whom he had met in Missouri.

Harlow Shapley assisted her husband in astronomical research both at Mount Wilson and at Harvard Observatory.

Harlow Shapley wrote numerous articles on eclipsing stars and other astronomical objects.

Harlow Shapley died in a nursing home in Boulder, Colorado on October 20,1972, shortly before his 87th birthday.

Harlow Shapley attended Institute on Religion in an Age of Science conferences at Star Island and was the editor of the book Science Ponders Religion.