Adelaide Ames

American Astronomer, Adelaide Ames (1900-1932)
Credit: Physics Today

Adelaide Ames was born on June 3, 1900 and graduated from Vassar College in 1922. After graduating, Ames's ambition was to pursue a career in journalism, but she found little luck in her job search. However, Harlow Shapley, who was director of the Harvard College Observatory at the time, offered her a job as a research assistant in 1923. A year later, Ames became the first woman to graduate with a master's degree in astronomy from Radcliffe College. In collaboration with Shapley at the Harvard College Observatory, she conducted a detailed survey of galaxies brighter than a magnitude 13 and noticed that the galaxy distribution varied with direction north or south of the Galactic plane. This catalog, which is now referred to as the Shapley-Ames Catalog, was published in 1932 and has had a profound impact on studies of galaxies in the local region of the Milky Way.

Ames was also a member of the American Astronomical Society and was a delegate to the International Astronomical Union in 1928 in Leiden, the Netherlands. She was also part of the committee to plan the Harvard meeting of the International Astronomical Union. Her life was tragically cut short, however, when she lost her life after a canoeing accident on June 26, 1932. As one of the first people to research the worlds beyond our own galaxy, Ames gained worldwide recognition and distinction during her lifetime and has had a lasting impact on the field of astronomy.

From left to right: Harvia Wilson, Adelaide Ames, and Cecilia Payne on Harvard Observatory grounds, 1924.
Credit: Goodsell Observatory