In response to: A Stellar Student, He Transformed Our Understanding of the Stars
Current issue
November 2025
NASA’s new IMAP mission, London’s big data detective, AI challenges in the classroom.
NASA’s new IMAP mission, London’s big data detective, AI challenges in the classroom.
The Princeton Portrait of astronomer Henry Norris Russell 1897 *1900 (November issue) provides interesting insights into his distinguished career and personality. Indeed, Dr. Russell is immortalized in the famous Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram (aka, H-R Diagram) that continues to revolutionize astrophysics.
Surprisingly however, the article errs in attributing to Russell the discovery that all stars are composed primarily (~99%) of hydrogen and helium. Credit for that fundamental insight belongs to Dr. Ceclia Payne-Gaposchkin in her Ph.D. thesis (1925) at Harvard College Observatory. Her conclusion was so revolutionary that Dr. Russell called it “clearly impossible.” Yet, her discovery was correct and, ironically, received the prestigious Henry Norris Russell Prize in 1976, from the American Astronomical Society.