Book Review: Shapley: Octogenarian Reminiscences: Through Rugged Ways to the Stars

A detailed account of the events surrounding and including the debate is being co-authored by Hoskin M. A. and this writer. It will be titled The scale of the universe: Astronomy's “Great Debate”, 1900–1930. The “Great Debate” was a discussion between Curtis and Shapley before the National Academy of Sciences in April 1920 over the scale of the universe. The debate involved two separate topics—the position of the Sun in the Milky Way, and the nature and distance of spiral nebulae. Shapley argued for a highly eccentric location for the Sun, and Curtis claimed that spirals are “island universes”; each man differed with the other on those views. Within less than a decade after the debate, the galactocentric model for our galaxy and the galaxian scale for spirals proved to be correct. Thus, both men “won” and “lost” the debate.

Most of Hale's correspondence is contained in the George Ellery Hale Microfilm collection, Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories Library, Pasadena, Calif.

Letter, Abbot to Hale, 3 January 1920, which is in the Archives of the National Academy of Sciences—National Research Council. Abbot wrote on 3 January 1920 that, “From the way the English are rushing relativity in Nature and elsewhere it looks as if the subject would be done to death long before the meeting”. He wrote in jest on 20 January 1920 (see note 2) that not more than a half dozen members of the Academy understood relativity, and that personally he prayed “… to God that the progress of science will send relativity to some region of space beyond the fourth dimension, from whence it may never return to plague us”. At that time relativity was new, disturbing, and poorly understood; consequently the idea of having it as the topic was abandoned.

These letters are in the Shapley files at the Harvard Archives.

See note 2.

In his Realm of the nebulae (New Haven, 1936), 88, Hubble referred to the affair as a “quasi-debate”, but he did not explain his terminology.

P. 81.

Shapley Harlow and Curtis Heber D. , “The Scale of the Universe”, Bulletin of National Research Council, ii (1921), 171–217.

Most of them are in the Harvard Archives.

For instance, see note 11 in his paper “Globular Clusters and the Structure of the Galactic System”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, xxx (1918), 42; and see the Conclusions section of his paper “On the Existence of External Galaxies”, ibid., xxxi (1919), 261–8.

An abstract of it was reproduced in “Cepheids in Spiral Nebulae”, Observatory, xlviii (1925), 139–42.

Sandage Allen , The Hubble atlas of galaxies (Washington D.C., 1961), 1.

See, for instance, the letter of Shapley to Slipher, 19 May 1925, which is at the Lowell Observatory. It should be noted that Shapley occasionally spoke of spirals as being extragalactic during the late teens (e.g., Shapley Harlow and Shapley Martha B. , “Studies Based on the Colors and Magnitudes in Stellar Clusters. XIV”, Astrophysical journal, 1 (1919), 133) and even in the published debate (note 8, 180). But his uncertainty about the matter is obvious from his reversals of viewpoint (e.g., “The Galactic System”, Nature, cx (1922), 580).

For example, Star clusters (New York, 1930), 195.

See pp. 75 and 79.

P. 57.

Unfortunately some of his experiences that could be the most interesting are omitted. There is no mention, for instance, of his dealings with astrologers during World War II, nor of his vehement opposition to the proposed publication by Macmillan of the work of I. Velikovsky. Even today in some publishing circles, Shapley is known less for his science and liberal views than for his condemnation of Velikovsky.

For example, his early assumption that interstellar space is largely transparent (“Studies Based on the Colors and Magnitudes in Stellar Clusters. XI”, Astrophysical journal, xlix (1919), 264). Helen Hogg has commented on some of his incorrect assumptions (“Harlow Shapley and the Globular Clusters”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, lxxvii (1965), 341).

For example, his suggestion that our galaxy is repelling spiral nebulae (see first reference in note 13).

For example, Shapley and his wife (see p. 126 in first reference in note 13) foreshadowed Hubble's velocity-distance relation by a decade.

It was partly summarized in a talk at the 130th meeting of the American Astronomical Society at Albany, New York, August 1969.