Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit

American astronomer E. Dorrit Hoffleit (1907-2007)
Credit: Virginia Trimble, 2007BAAS...39.1067T

Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit was born in March 1907 in Florence, Alabama, the daughter of German immigrants. As a child, Hoffleit enjoyed stargazing with her mother and brother, with meteor showers being especially favorite events to watch. The family later moved to Cambridge, MA so that her brother could attend Harvard University. Hoffleit then entered Radcliffe College and graduated with her mathematics degree in 1928. After graduation, she became a research assistant at the Harvard College Observatory. During college, Hoffleit had enrolled in two astronomy courses and so decided to take the relatively low-paying research job as opposed to a high-paying job as a statistician since she found the work at the observatory to be much more interesting (hear, hear!). In 1932, Hoffleit completed her M.A. in astronomy at Radcliffe College, with her research focusing on the light curves of meteors, and was published in the Proceedings of the United States National Academy of Sciences. After completing her M.A., she was content with continuing her job as a research assistant, but Harlow Shapley (who was the Harvard College Observatory director at the time) urged her to continue on to get a Ph.D., so that's exactly what she did. Her doctoral thesis of 1938 was on the topic of spectroscopic parallax which enables us to determine the distances to stars.

Hoffleit continued her work at the Harvard College Observatory until 1956, publishing original research in various topics, including variable stars (of which she discovered more than 1,200), novae, and absolute magnitudes (a measure of a star's intrinsic brightness). She also focused on researching the history of astronomy (which I think is especially stellar!) and wrote numerous articles for popular astronomy magazines. During World War II, Hoffleit worked at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where she provided detailed tables of calculations that were used to correctly aim artillery and other weapons.

E. Dorrit Hoffleit, late 1950's
Credit: Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association

After finishing her work at Harvard, Hoffleit moved on to Yale University. While at Yale, she was placed in charge of several large catalog projects, including the Catalog of Bright Stars. These publications contained valuable information about thousands of stars and have proven to be valuable reference guides for astronomers worldwide. Hoffleit was also offered a position as director of the Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association in Massachusetts. During her 21 years as director, Hoffleit implemented a summer research program that engaged more than 100 Yale undergraduate students in research on variable stars.

During the last few decades of her life, Hoffleit was awarded a number of honors, including honorary doctorates from Smith College in 1984 and Central Connecticut State University in 1998, the Annenberg Foundation Award of the American Astronomical Association in 1993, the Glover Award of Dickinson College in 1995, and the Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award in 1997, just to name a few. Also, as seems to be a common theme in this blog, in 1987, an asteroid was named "Dorrit" in her honor.