1948
Otto Struve was descended from three generations of noted astronomers. His education at the University of Kharkov was interrupted by World War I and the Russian Civil War, which left him a refugee in Turkey. From there Edwin Frost brought him to Yerkes Observatory, where he completed his doctorate at the University of Chicago and promptly joined the faculty. He directed four observatories — Yerkes, McDonald (which he founded and where a telescope is named for him), Leuschner, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (where he was the first director and encouraged the first search for extraterrestrial intelligence). He edited the Astrophysical Journal for more than 15 years. As Yerkes director he recruited a staff that included some of the world’s leading astronomers, among them Bruce medalists Chandrasekhar, Greenstein, Morgan, and Strömgren. Struve made detailed spectroscopic investigations of stars, especially close binaries and peculiar stars, and of the interstellar medium, where he discovered H II regions, and gaseous nebulae. He contributed to the understanding of the broadening of spectral lines due to stellar rotation, electric fields, and turbulence and worked to separate these effects from each other and from chemical abundances. He was a pioneer in the study of mass transfer in closely interacting binary stars. He wrote more than 900 articles, many of them popular ones, and six books.
Presentation of Bruce medal
Shane, C.D., PASP 60, 155-59 (1948).
Other awards
American Astronomical Society, Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, 1957.
National Academy of Sciences, Henry Draper Medal, 1949.
Royal Astronomical Society, Gold medal, 1944, presented by E.A. Milne, Popular Astronomy 52, 389-91 (1944).
Some offices held
American Astronomical Society, President, 1946-49.
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, President, 1951.
International Astronomical Union, President, 1952-55.
Biographical materials
Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley
Cowling, T.G., Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society 10, 283-304 (1964).
Kourganoff, Vladimir, “Otto Struve: Scientist and Humanist,” Sky & Telescope 75, 379-81 (1988).
Krisciunas, Kevin, “More about Otto Struve,” Sky & Telescope 76, 229-30 (1988).
Krisciunas, Kevin, Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 61, 350-387 (1992).
Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia, “Otto Struve as an Astrophysicist,” Sky & Telescope 25, 308 (1963).
Schorn, Ronald A., Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers, 2nd ed. (Springer, NY, 2014).
Sokolovskaya, Z.K., Dictionary of Scientific Biography 13, 115-20.
Sweitzer, James S., “A Most Exceptional Star: The Life of Otto Struve,” Griffith Observer 51, 9, 2 (1987).
Unsöld, Albrecht, Sterne und Menschen (Springer-Verlag, 1972), pp. 53-60.
Obituaries
Chandrasekhar, S., Ap.J. 139, 423 (1964).
Goldberg, Leo, QJRAS 5, 284-290 (1964).
Kukarkin, B.V. & P.G. Kulikovskii, Astronomicheskii Zhurnal 40, 1126-29 (1963) [English Translation in Soviet Astronomy 7, 859-61 (1964)].
Odgers, G.J., JRASC 57, 170-72 (1963).
Öpik, E.J., Irish Astronomical Journal 6, 153-54 (1963).
Phillips, John G., PASP 75, 501-04 (1963).
Swings, P., l’Astronomie 77, 243-45 (1963) [in French].
Unsöld, Albrecht, Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft (1963).
Portraits
AIP Center for History of Physics (several)
McDonald Observatory
Named after him
Lunar crater Struve
Minor planet #2227 Otto Struve
Otto Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory