Mary R. Calvert

Mary Ross Calvert (June 20, 1884 – June 25, 1974) was an American astronomical computer and astrophotographer. She started as her uncle Edward Emerson Barnard's assistant and ended publishing his (and their) work that cataloged over 300 dark objects (Dark Nebulae) — primarily those that extinguish the most starlight reaching the earth lie between the bulk (inward local sector, central bulge, and other sectors of the Milky Way) thus between the Local Arm (Orion Arm) and the Sagittarius Arm. She went on to publish other photographic works on astronomy.

Mary R. Calvert
Mary R. Calvert's 1927 passport photo
Born(1884-06-20)June 20, 1884
Nashville, Tennessee, US
DiedJune 25, 1974(1974-06-25) (aged 90)
Nashville, Tennessee, US
CitizenshipAmerican
Known forAtlas of the Northern Milky Way and A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomer and astrophotographer
InstitutionsYerkes Observatory

Early life

Calvert was born in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 20, 1884, to Alice Rosamond (Phillips) and Ebenezer Calvert (1850-1924). She was the eldest of their four daughters. Her father's elder sister Rhoda had married the astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard, and out of respect, her parents had called her sister Alice Barnard Calvert.[1]

Her father and his younger brother Peter Ross Calvert (1855-1931) ran Calvert Bros. Photography Studio, above the United Cigar Store at the southeast corner of 4th and Union Streets in Nashville.[2] The studio had been founded by J. H. Van Stavoren; Rodney Poole bought it at a chancery court sale in 1871, and the Calvert brothers bought it from Poole in 1896.[2]

Career

In 1905, she started work at Yerkes Observatory, Wisconsin as assistant and computer for her uncle[3] who was also professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago. She stayed at her uncle's house whilst employed by him.[1] He was known for his discovery of the high proper motion of Barnard's Star.[4]

In 1923, when Barnard died, she became curator of the Yerkes photographic plate collection and a high-level assistant, until her retirement in 1946.[5]

Barnard's work A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way was completed after his death in 1923 by Edwin B. Frost, director of the Yerkes Observatory, and Calvert. The work was nominally his although Calvert had done the preliminary work under his supervision, but it was she who did the computations necessary to complete the tables, numbered and sketched in darker objects added annotation to the reference stars. Calvert and Frost decided that it should be published in two volumes.[6] The atlas contained 349 dark objects although later editions covered 352 as three had been omitted by mistake. There were several more dark objects that were on the plates but that were not catalogued possibly due to Barnard's death, as both Calvert and Barnard had been aware of them.[7]

Only 700 copies were printed in 1927, making the original edition a collector's item. The Astronomy Compendium calls it a "seminal work".[8]

In 1934 she and Frank Elmore Ross published a photographic study, Atlas of the Northern Milky Way, based on Ross's photographs.[9]

Later life

After she retired from Yerkes in 1946, without receiving a pension. She returned to Nashville, where she worked in her sister's photographic studio part-time.[5]

She died in Nashville in 1974.

Publications
  • Atlas of the Northern Milky Way (with Frank Elmore Ross), University of Chicago Press (1934)

See also
  • Great Rift (astronomy) - the main zones from our viewpoint of dust clouds ('dark nebulae') obscuring the prominent vast bulk of the Milky Way in the night sky

References
  1. Hughes, Stefan (2012). Catchers of the Light: The Forgotten Lives of the Men and Women Who First Photographed the Heavens. ArtDeCiel Publishing. ISBN 9781620509616.
  2. "Calvert brothers photography studio". Tennessee Virtual Archive. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  3. Griffiths, Martin (November 3, 2016). Observing Nebulae. Springer. ISBN 9783319328843.
  4. Steinicke, Wolfgang (August 19, 2010). Observing and Cataloguing Nebulae and Star Clusters: From Herschel to Dreyer's New General Catalogue. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139490108.
  5. Donald E. Osterbrock (April 15, 2008). Yerkes Observatory, 1892-1950: The Birth, Near Death, and Resurrection of a Scientific Research Institution. University of Chicago Press. pp. 283–284. ISBN 978-0-226-63944-4.
  6. Barnard, Edward (1927). A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way. pp. Book II page 20.
  7. Barnard, Edward Emerson (August 14, 2014). A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139494038.
  8. Archived May 2, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
  9. Catalog of Copyright Entries. Part 1. [A] Group 1. Books. New Series. 1934.
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