Henry N. Russell Biography

Henry N. Russell Biography

            Henry Norris Russell is an astronomer from the nineteenth century who is known for developing the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. He was born in 1877 in New York. Russell later went on to study at Princeton and earned his doctorate in astronomy in 1899 at age 22.  In 1903 Russell raveled to Cambridge and worked with Arthur Robert Hinks at the Cambridge observatory.  He did research at the Carnegie Institution and was strongly influenced by astronomer George Darwin. He later returned to Princeton in 1905 and became an astronomy instructor and professor. He married Lucy May Cole in 1908 and ended up having four children with her.  Henry Norris Russell died in Princeton at the age of 79 in 1957.

            Henry Norris Russell was known as one of the most influential astronomers of his time. He helped create the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram which is a graph that shows the relationship between a star’s intrinsic brightness and spectral type. This was used to further a theory on how stars evolved. While he was working at the Cambridge University Observatory he developed one of the first photographic parallax programs to determine the distance to certain stars.  At Princeton Russell realized that the future of astronomy was in problem-oriented research.  When he was head of the research department he was free to use his math skills to search out and solve many astronomically related problems using large-scale observing programs.  At Princeton Russell was always doing research.  He spent most of his time doing research and shunned much of his academic and administrative duties. Therefore the school grew little in its staff and equipment.

            Russell’s research was mainly focused on planetary and stellar astronomy and astrophysics. He managed to develop an efficient method to analyze the orbits of binary stars. He was even able to come up with a way to calculate the masses and dimensions of eclipsing variable stars. He could even measure distances, motions, and masses of groups of binary stars. Russell wanted to confirm the theory of stellar evolution. With his diagram he was able to illustrate why this theory was viable and described what would be later known as Russell’s theory of stellar evolution. This theory was very popular until disproved by Arthur Stanley Eddington.

            After 1920 Russell focused mainly on researching the spectrum. He realized that the physical state of a star could be analyzed through its spectrum. He later went on to form networks of laboratories and observatory groups to work on analyzing line structures of complex spectra. Though this he became one of the most influential astronomers of his time.