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Helen Sawyer Hogg Wikipedia

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Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg, Order of Canada|CC , D.Litt , Doctor of Science|D.Sc , Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada|FRSC (August 1, 1905 – January 28, 1993) was a prolific astronomy|astronomer noted for her research into globular clusters, but best remembered for her astronomy column, which ran from 1951 until 1981.

A 1926 graduate of Mount Holyoke College, after graduation she went on to Harvard Observatory to work with Annie Jump Cannon and Harlow Shapley on star clusters. She received her doctorate in 1931 from Radcliffe College.

She married husband Frank Scott Hogg in 1930, and in 1935 moved to Ontario where she took a job at the David Dunlap Observatory. Frank Hogg was director of the observatory from 1946 until his death in 1951.

Over the next six decades, she published numerous papers, and established herself as a leader in the field of astronomy. In 1985, she married F. E. L. Priestley (Francis Ethelbert Louis Priestley) (1905–1988), a professor emeritus of English at the University of Toronto, who died in 1988. She died of a myocardial infarction|heart attack in 1993.

She won the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy in 1949 and the Klumpke-Roberts Award in 1983.

In 1968 she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and was promoted to Companion in 1976.

The asteroid 2917 Sawyer Hogg is named after her.

Last Modified:   2005-12-19