Yale Astronomy names first Hoffleit Undergraduate Research Scholars

Mon, 03/24/2014

The Yale Astronomy Department has selected Anna O’Grady from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Virginia Schilling from the University of Boulder at Colorado and Michael Warrener from Union College to be the inaugural Hoffleit scholars.

The Dorrit Hoffleit Undergraduate Astronomy Research Fellowship at Yale is named in honor of Dr. E. Dorrit Hoffleit, a senior research astronomer at Yale who worked for more than fifty years in the University’s Department of Astronomy. She also served as director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory on Nantucket Island for over 20 years, where she ran summer programs for hundreds of students, many of whom went on to successful careers in astronomy. She was the author of the Bright Star Catalogue and the co-author of The General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes. In 1988, Hoffleit was awarded the George Van Biesbroeck Prize by the American Astronomical Society for a lifetime of service to astronomy. She lived for 100 years, and through her teaching and summer programs, she inspired a lifelong interest in Astronomy in thousands of young women and men.