Making a Science of Observational Cosmology: The Cautious Optimism of Beatrice Tinsley

Halliwell Jonathan , “Quantum cosmology and the creation of the universe”, in Hetherington Norriss (ed.), Encyclopedia of cosmology (New York, 1993), 547–8.

Kragh Helge , Cosmology and controversy: The historical development of two theories of the universe (Princeton, 1996).

Sandage Allan , “The light travel time and the evolutionary correction to the magnitude of distant galaxies”, Astrophysical journal, cxxxiv (1961), 916–26.

Her thesis was published as Tinsley Beatrice M. , “Analysis of the optical absorption spectrum of neodymium magnesium nitrate”, Journal of chemical physics, xxxix (1963), 3503–8.

Tinsley Brian A. , personal interview, Dallas, November 1993.

F. G. Smith comments of the diversity of objects he lumped together as “radio stars” in his “Early work on radio stars at Cambridge”, in Sullivan W. T. III (ed.), The early years of radio astronomy: Reflections fifty years after Jansky's discovery (Cambridge, 1984), 237–48. Sullivan Woodruff T. III , discusses the evolution of Martin Ryle's beliefs (from belief that most radio stars were galactic, to the belief that they were cosmological) in his “The entry of radio astronomy into cosmology: Radio stars and Martin Ryle's 2C Survey”, in Bertotti B. Balbinot R. Bergia S. and Messina A. (eds), Modern cosmology in retrospect (Cambridge, 1990), 309–30.

Mathews Thomas and Sandage Allan , “Optical identification of 3C 48, 3C 196, and 3C 286 with stellar objects”, Astrophysical journal, cxxxviii (1963), 30–56; Sandage is quoted in Thorne Kip S. , Black holes and time warps: Einstein's outrageous legacy (New York, 1994), 335.

Schmidt Maarten , in Bertotti , op. cit. (ref. 6), 350.

Thorne , op. cit. (ref. 7), 341.

Schucking's racy account of the organization of the symposium is “The First Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics”, Physics today , August 1989, 46–52. See also Robinson Ivor Schild Alfred , and Schucking E. L. (eds). Quasi-stellar sources and gravitaional collapse, including the proceedings of the First Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysic (Chicago, 1965).

Other funders were the Aeronautical Research Laboratory, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. Robinson (eds), op. cit. (ref. 10), p. iv.

Schucking , op. cit. (ref. 10), 50.

Tinsley , in Edward Hill, My daughter Beatrice: A personal memoir of Dr. Beatrice Tinsley, astronomer (New York, 1986), 44; Tinsley Brian A. , op. cit. (ref. 5).

Gold in Robinson (eds), op. cit. (ref. 10), 470.

Robinson Ivor , personal interview, Dallas, November 1993.

Smith Harlan to Klivington Kenneth (Sloan Foundation), 10 July 1974. From the University of Texas Archive.

Ibid.

Her father's retrospective comment on this quotation; “Prophetic”. From Hill, op. cit. (ref. 13), 34. The anthology is almost certainly Munitz Milton K. (ed.), Theories of the universe from Babylon to modern science (New York, 1957). This matches Beatrice's description in being 429 pages of text as compared to the “425 pages of small print” she describes.

Scrapbooks in the possession of Brian Tinsley. Public aspects of the controversy are discussed in Kragh, op. cit. (ref. 2). For discussion of the broadcast debates, see pp. 243, 246.

Kragh , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Ibid. Kragh's preferred term is ‘pragmatic’, rather than ‘factual’. It is also worth noting, with Kragh, that the subsequent clash between the two theories was far more complex than a simple transatlantic rivalry.

Hill , op. cit. (ref. 13), 44.

DeVaucouleurs himself, who worked in France, England, Australia and the United States, and whose publications span a wide range of astronomical topics, is not a convincing exemplar of Kragh's national styles, but perhaps such a polymath can be expected to defy categorization.

“Research notes”, uncatalogued Tinsley collection, Department of Astronomy, Yale University.

Sandage , op. cit. (ref. 3).

Tinsley Beatrice M. , “Equivalent widths of interest for studies of the composition and evolution of galaxies”, Publications of the Department of Astronomy, University of Texas, ser. II, i, #15 (1967), 1–47; “Evolution of the stars and gas in galaxies”, Astrophysical journal, cli (1968), 547–65; “Possibility of a large evolutionary correction to the magnitude-redshift relation”, Astrophysics and space science, vi (1970), 344–51. The fourth was a collaboration with Patterson T. N. L. and Tinsley Brian , “Distribution of the redshifts of quasars”, Astrophysical letters, iv (1969), 55–56.

Analysis of the Science citation index shows her publications receiving at least 32 citations in 1971. The citation count of her first-author papers would rise to 121 in 1975, after which (with only three exceptions) it exceeded 100 citations per year until 1986, five years after her death. Interpreting citation data is notoriously difficult. Tinsley's growing citation count probably reflects both the growth of galaxy studies, as well as her own centrality to the field. Certainly, the authors citing her were central themselves.

Tinsley Beatrice M. and Spinrad Hyron , “Evolution of the M31 disk population”, Astrophysics and space science, xii (1971), 118–36, p. 119.

“Galactic evolution: Program and initial results”, Astronomy and astrophysics, xx (1972), 383–96; “Stellar evolution in elliptical galaxies”, Astrophysical journal, clxxviii (1972), 319–36.

More precisely, Tinsley calculated that q₀ would be too high by at least 0.5 if evolution were ignored: Astrophysical journal (Letters), clxxiii (1972), L93–L97. This was one of Tinsley's widely-cited early papers.

Gott J. R. Gunn J. E. and Schramm D. N. , “An unbound universe?”, Astrophysical journal, cxciv (1974), 534–53.

Ibid., 549.

Schramm David , quoted in Dennis Overbye, Lonely hearts of the cosmos (New York, 1992), 179.

Hill , op. cit. (ref. 13), 76.

Hill , op. cit. (ref. 13), 87.

Jeremiah Ostriker in Lightman Alan and Brawer Roberta , Origins: The lives and works of modern cosmologists (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 272.

Ostriker Jeremiah and Tremaine Scott , “Another evolutionary correction of the luminosity of giant galaxies”, Astrophysical journal (Letters), ccii (1975) L113. “Drastic effects” is actually Tinsley and Gunn's reaction to Ostriker and Tremaine's calculation. Gunn James E. and Tinsley Beatrice , “Dynamical friction: The Hubble Diagram as a cosmological test”, Astrophysical journal, ccx (1976), 1–6.

Gunn and Tinsley , op. cit. (ref. 37), 5.

Tinsley Beatrice , “Cosmology and galactic evolution”, in Balian R. (eds), Les Houches, session XXXII, 1979 — Cosmologie physique/Physical cosmology (Amsterdam, 1980), 162–77, p. 168.