Related papers: William Pendry Bidelman (1918-2011)
Weird galaxies are outliers that have either unknown or very uncommon features making them different from the normal sample. These galaxies are very interesting as they may provide new insights into current theories, or can be used to form…
As part of an extensive survey of diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs), we have obtained optical spectra of the moderately reddened B5V star HD 62542, which is known to have an unusual UV extinction curve of the type usually identified with…
The discovery of the interstellar medium and the early work of Lyman Spitzer, Jr. are reviewed here in the context of the remarkable observation in the early 1950's that star formation continues in the present age. Prior to this…
Among the emission-line stars, the classical Be stars known for their extreme properties are remarkable. The Be stars are B-type main sequence stars that have displayed at least once in their life emission lines in their spectrum. Beyond…
The diffuse interstellar bands (DIBs) are ubiquitous absorption spectral features arising from the tenuous material in the space between stars -- the interstellar medium (ISM). Since their first detection nearly nine decades ago, over 400…
I published an interview of Leo Breiman in Statistical Science [Olshen (2001)], and also the solution to a problem concerning almost sure convergence of binary tree-structured estimators in regression [Olshen (2007)]. The former summarized…
The study of cataclysmic variable stars has long been a fruitful area of co-operation between amateur and professional astronomers. In this Presidential Address, I shall take stock of our current understanding of these fascinating binary…
The BAA Variable Star Section is the world's longest established organisation for the systematic observation of variable stars, having been formed in 1890. Its database contains nearly 3 million measurements going back to 1840 and is an…
This obituary is devoted to M. I. Polikarpov (28.12.1952 - 18.07.2013), our teacher, our colleague, our friend. We recollect some facts of his biography and stages of his scientific career, and make a brief review of some of his most known…
From 1929 to his death in 1944, A. Eddington worked on developing a highly ambitious theory of fundamental physics that covered everything in the physical world, from the tiny electron to the universe at large. His unfinished theory…
Robert F. Coleman, a highly original mathematician who has had a profound influence on modern number theory and arithmetic geometry, passed away on March 24, 2014. We give an overview of his life and career, including some of his major…
It has been generally accepted that the originators of the double star astronomy were Christian Mayer and William Herschel. We recovered the memory of the poorly known Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna, who published the first…
Aboriginal Australians carefully observe the properties and positions of stars, including both overt and subtle changes in their brightness, for subsistence and social application. These observations are encoded in oral tradition. I examine…
T. H. Astbury (1858-1922) was for many years the much-respected headmaster of a boys' junior school in the English market town of Wallingford. By night he was a dedicated amateur astronomer who enjoyed observing meteors, variable stars and…
AP And is a well-detached F5 eclipsing binary star for which only a very limited amount of information was available before this publication. We have obtained very extensive measurements of the light curve (19097 differential V magnitude…
Wasssily Hoeffding's terminal illness and untimely death in 1991 put an end to efforts that were made to interview him for Statistical Science. An account of his scientific work is given in Fisher and Sen [The Collected Works of Wassily…
A photon of wavelength lambda ~1 micron interacting with a dust grain of radius a_p ~ 1 mm (a "pebble") undergoes scattering in the forward direction, largely within a small characteristic diffraction angle theta_s ~ lambda/a_p ~ 100".…
David Elijah Packer (1862-1936), a librarian by profession, was an enthusiastic amateur astronomer who observed from London and Birmingham. He first came to the attention of the astronomical community in 1890 when he discovered a variable…
AST3-1 is the second-generation wide-field optical photometric telescope dedicated to time domain astronomy at Dome A, Antarctica. Here we present the results of $i$ band images survey from AST3-1 towards one Galactic disk field. Based on…
Astronomers have long tracked double stars in efforts to find those that are gravitationally-bound binaries and then to determine their orbits. Early catalogues by the Herschels, Struves, and others began with their own discoveries. In 1906…