Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: C.H. Payne H.N. Russell and standards of evidence in early quantitative spectroscopy

Details Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: C.H. Payne H.N. Russell and standards of evidence in early quantitative spectroscopy Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: C.H. Payne H.N. Russell and standards of evidence in early quantitative spectroscopy

Jul 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010jahh...13..139d&link_type=abstract

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (ISSN 1440-2807), Vol. 13, No. 2, p. 139 - 144 (2010).

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Cecilia Payne, Payne-Gaposchkin, Henry Norris Russell, Meghnad Saba, Spectroscopy, Solar Composition, Abundances Of Elements

Scientific paper

The ionization equilibrium theory of Meghnad Saha was hardly four years old, and still far from general acceptance, when a graduate student at Harvard University, Cecilia H. Payne, applied it to calibrate the Harvard spectral sequence as a temperature sequence. Payne indeed utilized Saha's relation not in its original form, but in its more acceptable form based upon a statistical mechanical re-derivation by E.A. Milne and R.H. Fowler. Her temperature calibration was, therefore, not at issue for her mentors at Harvard, such as Harlow Shapley, and her external reviewer for her Ph.D., Shapley's former teacher, the influential Princeton astronomer, Henry Norris Russell. Other conclusions she drew from her analysis, moreover, went beyond the evidence, they felt, and so she had to moderate her most provocative finding: that hydrogen dominated the atmospheres of the stars. She did so, however, in a manner that was designed to record for posterity that she was the first to make this observation, right or wrong. In so doing, Payne can be credited with profound political acumen, a quality that deserves more attention in the history of twentieth century astronomy.

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