Born Princeton, New Jersey, USA, 7 July 1909
Died Tucson, Arizona, USA, 20 April 1997
American astronomer John Irwin pursued a method for determining which was the near edge, and which was the far edge, of spiral galaxies. He found that spiral arms “trail.”
In 1955 Irwin and his graduate student at Indiana University, Arthur Cox, went to South Africa to observe Cepheid variable stars in open clusters. In doing so they helped establish the zero‐point of the Period–Luminosity Relation.
Irwin's major collection of historic photographs, featuring 20th‐century astronomers, is now archived by the American Institute of Physics.
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Selected Reference
Glyn Jones, Kenneth (1968). Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters. London: Faber and Faber.
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(2007). Irwin, John Henry Barrows. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_702
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