Vocation : Science : Astronomy

Walter Robert Wilhelm Grotrian (21 April 1890 in Aachen; † 3 March 1954 in Potsdam) was a German astronomer and astrophysicist.
Grotrian studied the emission line from the solar corona in the green region of the spectrum; this emission line could not be attributed to any known chemical element and was thought to be a new element (which scientists named "coronium"). Grotrian and Bengt Edlén from Sweden demonstrated that the two observed emission lines arise from iron atoms that have lost about half their 26 electrons.

Catherine Jeanne Cesarsky (born Catherine Jeanne Gattegno on 24 February 1943) is an Argentine and French astronomer, known for her research activities in astrophysics and for her leadership in astronomy and atomic energy. She is the current chairperson of the Square Kilometre Array's governing body, SKAO Council. She was the first female president of the International Astronomical Union (2006-2009) and the first female director general of the European Southern Observatory (1999-2007).

Édouard Benjamin Baillaud (14 February 1848 – 8 July 1934) was a French astronomer.

Jean-Pierre Luminet (born 3 June 1951) is a French astrophysicist, specializing in black holes and cosmology. He is an emeritus research director at the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique). Luminet is a member of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) and Laboratoire Univers et Théories (LUTH) of the Paris-Meudon Observatory, and is a visiting scientist at the Centre de Physique Théorique (CPT) in Marseilles. He is also a writer and poet.
Luminet has been awarded several prizes on account of his work in pure science and science communication, including the Georges Lemaître Prize (1999) in recognition of his work in cosmology. In November 2021, he received the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science. He serves on the editorial board of Inference: The International Review of Science.The asteroid 5523 Luminet, discovered in 1991 at Palomar Observatory, was named after him.Luminet has published fifteen science books, seven historical novels, TV documentaries, and six poetry collections. He is an artist, an engraver, a sculptor, and a musician. During his music career, he has collaborated with composers such as Gérard Grisey and Hèctor Parra. Some of Luminet's literary works have been translated into other languages, such as Chinese, Korean, Bengali, German, Lithuanian, Greek, Italian or Spanish.

Hervé Auguste Étienne Albans Faye ((1814-10-01)1 October 1814 – (1902-07-04)4 July 1902) was a French astronomer, born at Saint-Benoît-du-Sault (Indre) and educated at the École Polytechnique, which he left in 1834, before completing his course, to accept a position in the Paris Observatory to which he had been appointed on the recommendation of M. Arago. It was during his time at the École Polytechnique that he developed his interest in astronomy.He studied comets, and discovered the periodic comet 4P/Faye on 22 November 1843. His discovery of "Faye's Comet" attracted worldwide attention, and won him the 1844 Lalande Prize and a membership in the French Academy of Sciences. In 1848 he became an instructor in geodesy at the Polytechnique, and in 1854 rector of the academy at Nancy and professor of astronomy in the faculty of science there. Other promotions followed in succeeding decades. He became Minister of Public Instruction in the Rochebouet cabinet in 1877, a position which he held only briefly.
Faye served as the President of the Société Astronomique de France (SAF), the French astronomical society, from 1889 to 1891. He also served as president of the International Geodetic Association from 1892 to 1902.His work covered the entire field of astronomical investigation. It comprised the determination of comet periods, the measurement of parallaxes, and the study of stellar and planetary movements. He also studied the physics of the sun. He advanced several original theories on the nature and form of comets, meteors, the aurora borealis, and the sun.

Ludwig Franz Benedikt Biermann (March 13, 1907 in Hamm – January 12, 1986 in München) was a German astronomer, obtaining his Ph.D. from Göttingen University in 1932.He made important contributions to astrophysics and plasma physics, discovering the Biermann battery. He predicted the existence of the solar wind which in 1947 he dubbed "solar corpuscular radiation".
He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the fall of 1961. He won the Bruce Medal in 1967 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1974.
Asteroid 73640 Biermann is named in his honor.

Chriet Titulaer (May 9, 1943 – April 23, 2017), born in Hout-Blerick, Venlo, Limburg, was a Dutch astronomer, television presenter and popular science and technology writer. He lived in Houten, Utrecht.

Olin Chaddock Wilson (January 13, 1909 – July 13, 1994) was an American astronomer best known for his work as a stellar spectroscopist.Born in San Francisco, California as the son of a lawyer, Wilson showed an interest in physics at an early age. He studied astronomy and physics at the University of California, Berkeley and wrote his first scientific paper in 1932 on the subject of the speed of light. He received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1934.
Wilson was a staff member of Mount Wilson Observatory (not named after Olin Wilson) for most of his research career where he studied stellar chromospheres. He was the first scientist to discover activity cycles, similar to the solar 11-year sunspot cycle, in other stars. In collaboration with Vainu Bappu, an Indian astronomer, he also showed that there was a correlation between the width of the Ca II lines in stellar spectra and the star's luminosity, the Wilson–Bappu effect.He gave the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship in 1977 and won the Bruce Medal in 1984.