Robert Paul Kraft (June 16, 1927 – May 26, 2015) was an American astronomer. He performed pioneering work on Cepheid variables, stellar rotation, novae, and the chemical evolution of the Milky Way. His name is also associated with the Kraft break: the abrupt change in the average rotation rate of main sequence stars around spectral type F8.
Harold Lester Johnson (April 17, 1921 – April 2, 1980) was an American astronomer.
Harold Johnson was born in Denver, Colorado, on April 17, 1921. He received his early education in Denver public schools and went to the University of Denver, graduating with a degree in mathematics in 1942. Johnson was recruited by the MIT Radiation Laboratory to work on World War II related radar research. After the war Johnson began graduate studies in astronomy at University of California, Berkeley where he completed his thesis under Harold Weaver in 1948.
In the following years working at Lowell Observatory, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Yerkes Observatory (where he met William Wilson Morgan), McDonald Observatory, University of Texas–Austin, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory in Tucson, Arizona, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico he applied his instrumental and electronic talents to developing and calibrating astronomical photoelectric detectors.
He died of a heart attack in Mexico City in 1980. He and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Jones, had two children.
Johnson was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize by the American Astronomical Society in 1956. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1969. He is remembered for introducing the UBV photometric system (also called the Johnson or Johnson-Morgan system), along with William Wilson Morgan in 1953.
Donald Edward Machholz (October 7, 1952 – August 9, 2022) was an American amateur astronomer who was credited with the discovery of 12 comets that bear his name.
Kenneth Linn Franklin (March 25, 1923 – June 18, 2007) was an American astronomer and educator. Franklin was the chief scientist at the Hayden Planetarium from 1956 to 1984 and was co-credited with discovering radio waves originating on Jupiter, the first detection of signals from another planet. He was often a local and national media figure including during Apollo 11, the first human mission to the moon, when Franklin was an on-camera astronomy expert for NBC.
André Couder (27 November 1897 – 16 January 1979) was a French optician and astronomer.
Heinz Haber (May 15, 1913 in Mannheim – February 13, 1990 in Hamburg) was a German physicist and science writer who primarily became known for his TV programs and books about physics and environmental subjects. His lucid style of explaining hard science has frequently been imitated by later popular science presenters in Germany.
Bartholomeus Jan "Bart" Bok (April 28, 1906 – August 5, 1983) was a Dutch-American astronomer, teacher, and lecturer. He is best known for his work on the structure and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, and for the discovery of Bok globules, which are small, densely dark clouds of interstellar gas and dust that can be seen silhouetted against brighter backgrounds. Bok suggested that these globules may be in the process of contracting, before forming into stars.
Bok married fellow astronomer Priscilla Fairfield in 1929, and for the remainder of their lives, the two collaborated so closely on their astronomical work that the Royal Astronomical Society said "from that point on it is difficult and pointless to separate his achievements from hers". The Boks displayed such great mutual enthusiasm for explaining astronomy to the public that The Boston Globe described them in 1936 as "salesmen of the Milky Way".: 44 They worked together on research and co-authored academic papers, and their general interest book The Milky Way went through five editions and was "widely acclaimed as one of the most successful astronomical books ever published".Bok's primary research interest was the structure of our galaxy. When he was asked by the editors of Who's Who in America to submit a statement concerning "Thoughts on My Life", he wrote, "I have been a happy astronomer for the past sixty years, wandering through the highways and byways of our beautiful Milky Way."Bart Bok was an exceedingly popular personality in the field of astronomy, noted for his affability and humor. When asteroid 1983 Bok was named for him and his wife Priscilla, he thanked the International Astronomical Union for giving him "a little plot of land that I can retire to and live on."
