Born Bellevue, Pennsylvania, USA, 31 March 1908
Died Columbus, Ohio, USA, 20 April 2000
American spectroscopist Philip Keenan was the first “K” of MKK spectral types (where M = William Morgan and the second K = Edith Kellman), one of the primary ways of classifying stars from 1943 down to the present. The elder son of Charles Gaskell Keenan and Eveylyn Larrabee (née Childs) Keenan, he was discovered by the Stanford University psychologist Lewis M. Terman, after the family moved to Ojai, in central California. Terman included him in a sample of about 1,000 children with high intelligence quotients (above 135), and other indications of exceptional brilliance, whom he followed for many decades, showing that Keenan was quite typical of the group in outstanding later achievements.
Keenan received his BS from the University of Arizona in 1929, publishing his first paper (on the color of the Moon during total eclipse, important for understanding transmission of light by the Earth's...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Selected References
Boeshaar, Patricia C. (2000). “Philip C. Keenan (1908–2000).” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 112: 1519–1522.
Copage, Eric (24 April 2000). “Philip C. Keenan, 92, Pioneer in the Classification of Stars.” New York Times., p. A18.
Corbally, C. J., R. O. Gray, and R. F. Garrison (eds.) (1994). The MK Process at 50 Years: A Powerful Tool for Astrophysical Insight: A Workshop of the Vatican Observatory, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A., September 1993. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific. (Presentations to W. W. Morgan and P. C. Keenan, p. xxi.)
Henyey, L. G. and Philip C. Keenan (1940). “Interstellar Radiation from Free Electrons and Hydrogen Atoms.” Astrophysical Journal 91: 625–630.
Keenan, Philip C. (1929). “The Photometry of the Total Lunar Eclipse of November 27, 1928.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 41: 297–304.
Keenan, Philip C. and Cecilia Barnbaum (1999). “Revision and Calibration of MK Luminosity Classes for Cool Giants by Hipparcos Parallaxes. ” Astrophysical Journal 518: 859–865.
Morgan, W. W., Philip C. Keenan, and Edith Kellman (1943). An Atlas of Stellar Spectra, with an Outline of Spectral Classification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Osmer, Patrick S. (2001). “Philip C. Keenan, 1908–2000.” Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society 33: 1574–1575.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Scott, M.W. (2007). Keenan, Philip Childs. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_747
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_747
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-31022-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-30400-7
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyReference Module Physical and Materials ScienceReference Module Chemistry, Materials and Physics