BornKharkov, (Ukraine), 12 August 1897
DiedBerkeley, California, USA, 6 April 1963
Russian-American stellar astronomer Otto Struve contributed to our understanding of the spectra of stars and nebulae, binary stars, the interstellar medium, and stellar structure and evolution. He was the great-grandson of Friedrich Struve , the grandson of Otto Wilhelm Struve , the nephew of Karl Struve , and the son of Gustav Struve , professor of astronomy at Kharkov University, and his wife Elizabeth.
Otto Struve had begun studies in astronomy at Kharkov University but enlisted in the Imperial Russian Army in 1916. At the end of World War I, he returned to his studies, completing a diploma (BS) in 1919 and then rejoined the army as a lieutenant in the White Russian forces opposing the revolution. When that cause was lost, he and many others fled to Turkey, where Struve attempted to make contact with members of his immediate family (few of whom survived). He got in touch with a German aunt who...
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Selected References
Cowling, T. G. (1964). “Otto Struve.” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 10: 283–304.
Evans, D. and J. Mulholland (1986). Big and Bright: A History of the McDonald Observatory. Austin: University of Texas Press. (The McDonald years are discussed from a Texan viewpoint.)
Goldberg, Leo (1964). “Otto Struve.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 5: 284–290.
Milne, Edward A. (1944). “Address Delivered by the President, Professor E. A. Milne, on the Award of the Gold Medal to Professor Otto Struve.” Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 104: 112–120.
Osterbrock, Donald E. (1997). Yerkes Observatory, 1892–1950: The Birth, Near Death, and Resurrection of a Scientific Research Institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Covers Struve’s career at the University of Chicago.)
Payne-Gaposchkin, Cecilia (1963). “Otto Struve as an Astrophysicist.” Sky & Telescope 25, no. 6: 308–310. (Perhaps the best general survey of Struve’s work.)
Struve, Otto and Velta Zebergs (1962). Astronomy of the 20th Century. New York: Macmillan.
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Schorn, R.A. (2014). Struve, Otto. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1341
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