Bevan Percival Sharpless (August 2, 1904 – October 28, 1950) was an American astronomer, best known for his 1944 discovery that the orbit of Phobos was decaying .
19-649: Sharpless is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: Bevan Sharpless (1904–1950), American solar system astronomer Christopher Sharpless (born 1945), American 1988 Winter Olympics bobsledder Isaac Sharpless (1848–1920), American educator Josh Sharpless (born 1988), American baseball player Karl Barry Sharpless (born 1941), American chemist and Nobel prize winner Mattie R. Sharpless (born 1942), American diplomat Nathan J. Sharpless (1823–1893), American politician from Pennsylvania Norman Sharpless (born 1966), American oncologist and director of
38-594: A chemical reaction Sharpless epoxidation , a chemical reaction Sharpless oxyamination , a chemical reaction [REDACTED] Surname list This page lists people with the surname Sharpless . If an internal link intending to refer to a specific person led you to this page, you may wish to change that link by adding the person's given name (s) to the link. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sharpless&oldid=1191683540 " Category : Surnames Hidden categories: Articles with short description Short description
57-668: A permanent appointment as a junior astronomer on January 16, 1929. At the beginning of 1930, he was elected a member of the American Astronomical Society . He was a member of a USNO expedition to Niuafo'ou in the Tonga Islands to make observations of the solar eclipse of October 21, 1930 . In 1929, Harry Edward Burton, head of the Equatorial Division at the USNO, discovered anomalies in
76-524: Is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC . The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the advancement of astronomy and closely related branches of science, while the secondary purpose includes enhancing astronomy education and providing a political voice for its members through lobbying and grassroots activities. Its current mission
95-463: Is different from Wikidata All set index articles Bevan Sharpless Sharpless was born to Ethel Mae Bevan and Albert Wayne Sharpless on August 2, 1904, in Chester Heights, Pennsylvania , the only child of the marriage. He attended Swarthmore High School then Swarthmore College , graduating in 1926 with an A.B. degree in mathematics. In 1923, he traveled with a group from
114-405: Is to enhance and share humanity's scientific understanding of the universe as a diverse and inclusive astronomical community. The society was founded in 1899 through the efforts of George Ellery Hale . The constitution of the group was written by Hale, George Comstock , Edward Morley , Simon Newcomb and Edward Charles Pickering . These men, plus four others, were the first Executive Council of
133-824: The Division on Dynamical Astronomy (1969), the High Energy Astrophysics Division (1969), the Solar Physics Division (1969), the Historical Astronomy Division (1980) and the Laboratory Astrophysics Division (2012). The membership includes physicists, mathematicians, geologists, engineers and others whose research interests lie within the broad spectrum of subjects now comprising contemporary astronomy. The annual meeting of
152-486: The orbital decay is caused not by atmospheric drag, but by solid body tidal forces not considered by Shklovsky. Nonetheless, Sharpless's work stands as the first useful calculation of Phobos's secular acceleration. (His calculations for Deimos, conversely, were deemed "barely significant" due to their high systematic error.) Both Sharpless and Shklovsky have craters on Phobos named in their honor. Sharpless published in 1946 on photographic observation of comets, work that
171-573: The AAS is held in the spring and constitutes the largest gathering of astronomers, numbering over 3,000 in 2023. In 2019 three AAS members were selected into the tenth anniversary class of TED Fellows. The AAS established the AAS Fellows program in 2019 to "confer recognition upon AAS members for achievement and extraordinary service to the field of astronomy and the American Astronomical Society." The inaugural class
190-593: The National Cancer Institute Stewart Sharpless (1926–2013), American galactic astronomer Sharpless catalog , a 20th-century astronomical catalog with 313 items Disappearance of Toni Sharpless (born 1979), American nurse who disappeared in 2009 Fictional characters [ edit ] A character in Madama Butterfly See also [ edit ] Sharpless asymmetric dihydroxylation ,
209-572: The college to Yerbanis, Mexico to witness an eclipse of September 10, 1923, and again to New Haven, Connecticut , to observe the solar eclipse of January 24, 1925 . He married Ethel May Gamble on September 10, 1927, in Glenolden, Pennsylvania . For two years after graduation, Sharpless worked as an actuary . He received a temporary appointment with the United States Naval Observatory on August 16, 1928; this became
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#1732765918827228-451: The main group. The divisions of the AAS, together with their main research interests, are: Similar prizes are awarded by AAS divisions. These include: The AAS also manages an International Travel Grant program, which any astronomer working in the US may apply to for travel to international astronomy-related conferences and other smaller grant and award programs. American Astronomical Society won
247-478: The orbital longitude of Phobos , the larger moon of Mars . In 1939, he and Sharpless began a systematic study of the orbital behavior of Phobos and Deimos . Sharpless's photographic observations with a 40-inch Ritchey-Chrétien reflector were inferior to Burton's visual observations with a 26-inch refractor (an instrument more suited for high-precision observations), but Sharpless was sooner ready to publish. Another USNO astronomer, Edgar W. Woolard , published on
266-737: The paper was nothing more than a practical joke, it was taken seriously by others including Carl Sagan and national science adviser Fred Singer , who commented: If the satellite is indeed spiraling inward as deduced from astronomical observation, then there is little alternative to the hypothesis that it is hollow and therefore Martian made. The big 'if' lies in the astronomical observations; they may well be in error. Since they are based on several independent sets of measurements taken decades apart by different observers with different instruments, systematic errors may have influenced them. Singer's speculations were correct; Sharpless's calculations were affected by differences between observations. Additionally,
285-531: The same secular accelerations in 1944 (naming Sharpless as the inspiration), but his work was focused on numerical rather than observational analysis. Sharpless's 1945 paper Secular accelerations in the longitudes of the satellites of Mars drawing on observations from 1879 to 1941, was the first to compute these accelerations. They provided the first evidence that Phobos's orbit was decaying and would result in its destruction . Sharpless's paper also computed much smaller accelerations for Deimos. Sharpless's work
304-410: The society; Newcomb was the first president. The initial membership was 114. The AAS name of the society was not finally decided until 1915, previously it was the "Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America". One proposed name that preceded this interim name was "American Astrophysical Society". The AAS today has over 8,000 members and six divisions – the Division for Planetary Sciences (1968),
323-527: Was conducted in 1943. Suffering from emphysema , Sharpless retired from the Naval Observatory's Washington, D.C. office on January 1, 1949, and moved to its Florida office at Naval Air Station Richmond . Long in poor health, he died on October 28, 1950, in Atlanta, Georgia . American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society ( AAS , sometimes spoken as "double-A-S" )
342-462: Was designated by the AAS Board of Trustees and includes an initial group of 232 Legacy Fellows. Because the field of astronomy is diverse, several divisions have been formed each of which promotes and enables a different branch of astronomy or astronomy-related science as well as working within the overall charter of the AAS. Many of the divisions hold separate meetings in addition to meeting with
361-500: Was of little interest outside his field for a decade (though it did spark further work in planetary satellites), until Iosif Shklovsky began studying the cause of the decay in the late 1950s. Working off the hypothesis that the decay was caused by interactions with Mars's thin atmosphere, Shklovsky concluded that Phobos might be a hollow metal object as little as 6 centimetres (2.4 in) thick - an unambiguously artificial object. Though Shklovsky later claimed to Patrick Moore that
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