Abstract
THE recent election of Dr. B. Lyot and Profs. J. H. Oort and Shajn as associates of the Royal Astronomical Society is significant not only as a recognition of their contributions to astronomy, but also as emphasizing the modern tendency of the Society to give this honour for research rather than for official position alone. Ever since Lockyer's and Janssen's successful detection of prominences without an eclipse, the possibility of the daylight photography of the solar corona has exercised astronomers. It has, however, been left to the young French astronomer Lyot, one of the new associates, working with exquisitely designed though inexpensive apparatus, to detect the corona on the Pic du Midi by its polarized light, then afterwards to photograph the inner bright part, and finally to obtain high dispersion spectra in the visible and infra-red of its characteristic emission lines of unknown origin. Fully as distinguished in another field is Prof. Oort of Ley den. In addition to his numerous contributions to stellar statistics, he is especially known for his quantitative formulation of Lindblad's hypothesis of galactic rotation, a formulation which in Oort's hands has greatly clarified our ideas on stellar motions and our knowledge of the structure of the galactic system. Prof. Shajn is a representative of the growing school of young Russian astronomers. His work has been characterized especially by its versatility; he has made contributions of outstanding merit in fields so wide apart as the disturbing action of the earth on meteoric orbits and the study of complex multiplets in stellar spectra.
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Royal Astronomical Society: New Associates. Nature 139, 916 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139916a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139916a0