Alice Hall Farnsworth

Alice Hall Farnsworth was born in Williamsburg, Massachusetts,[1] the youngest of four children of Frederick Tudor Farnsworth and Anna Caroline Tufts Farnsworth. As a child, she was an active reader of St. Nicholas magazine, submitting contest entries and winning prizes.[2]

Farnsworth studied astronomy under Anne Sewell Young at Mount Holyoke College, earning her bachelor's degree in 1916; one of Young's other notable students at the time was astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg. Farnsworth pursued graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where she earned a master's degree in 1917 and a Ph.D. in 1920. Her dissertation, A comparison of the photometric fields of the 6-inch doublet: 24-inch reflector, and 40-inch refractor of the Yerkes Observatory, with some investigation of the astrometric field of the reflector (University of Chicago Press 1926),[3] was based on her research at Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin.[4][5][6]

Farnsworth was elected to the membership of the American Astronomical Society in 1917. She returned to the astronomy department at Mount Holyoke[7] after completing her doctorate. She taught astronomy courses,[8] including darkroom skills. From 1929-1931 she was president of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. From 1930-1931 she was a visiting researcher and Martin Kellogg Fellow[9] at Lick Observatory in California.[10] She succeeded Anne S. Young as director of the Williston Observatory in 1936.[4] In 1937, she was promoted to the rank of full professor.[11] From 1938 to 1941, she served on the council of the American Astronomical Society.[12] During a sabbatical in 1940-1941, she traveled to Brazil to observe a solar eclipse, in a small team of scientists led by Charles Hugh Smiley;[13] she wrote about her time in South America for Popular Astronomy.[14]

Farnsworth's research involved stars in a region of the constellation Cassiopeia, and stellar photometry; she also continued the Williston Observatory's studies of sunspots and lunar occultations.[15][4] Publications by Farnsworth included "Proper Motions of Certain Long Period Variable Stars" (The Astronomical Journal 1921, with Anne Sewell Young),[16] Zone + 45 ̊ of Kapteyn's selected areas: photographic photometry for 1550 stars (University of Chicago Press 1927, with John Adelbert Pankhurst),[17] "Measurement of Effective Wave-Lengths with the Recording Microphotometer" (Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1931),[18] A study of effective wave-lengths with the recording microphotometer ; Color changes in variable stars (University of California Press 1933),[19] and "Stellar Spectra and Colors in Milky Way Region in Cassiopeia" (Astrophysical Journal Supplement 1955).[20]

Alice Hall Farnsworth died in 1960, aged 66 years, in Newton, Massachusetts.[21][22] Her papers are in the Mount Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections.[1]

• A photograph of Alice Hall Farnsworth with a student, Martha Hazen, working at (and lit by) a light table in Williston Observatory, in the early 1950s.
• A photograph of the American Association of Variable Star Observers, including Alice Hall Farnsworth, taken at Yerkes Observatory in 1925, from the University of Chicago Library.
• Robert Dale Hall, "Education of American research astronomers, 1876-1941" (Ph.D. dissertation, Oregon State University 1999).
• Donald E. Osterbrock, Yerkes Observatory 1892-1950: The Birth, Near Death, and Resurrection of a Scientific Research Institution (University of Chicago Press 1997).