Anne Cowley

Anne Pyne Cowley is an American astronomer known for her spectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes, including the 1983 discovery of a likely black hole in LMC X-3, an X-ray binary star system in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This became the first known extragalactic stellar black hole,[1][2] and the second known stellar black hole after Cygnus X-1.[2] She is a professor emerita at Arizona State University.[3]

Anne Cowley
Anne Cowley at the 138th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Michigan State University
Alma materWellesley College
University of Michigan
Known forSpectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes
SpouseCharles R. Cowley
AwardsAlumnae Achievement Award
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
University of Michigan
Arizona State University

Education and career

Cowley is a 1959 graduate of Wellesley College, where she became interested in astronomy after taking a general education course on the subject. She went to the University of Michigan for graduate study in astronomy, earned a Ph.D. there, and met her eventual husband, astronomer Charles R. Cowley.[1]

She continued as a researcher at the University of Chicago until 1967, when she returned to the University of Michigan as a research scientist. In 1983, she took a professorship at Arizona State University.[1]

Recognition

In 1986, Wellesley College gave Cowley their Alumnae Achievement Award.[1] She was named a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.[4][5]

References
  1. "Anne Pyne Cowley '59", Alumnae Achievement Awards 1986, Wellesley College, retrieved 2022-05-28
  2. Sullivan, Walter (January 7, 1983), "'Black hole' star is believed found", The New York Times, retrieved 2022-05-28
  3. "Anne Cowley", iSearch, Arizona State University, retrieved 2022-05-28
  4. AAS Fellows, American Astronomical Society, retrieved 2022-05-28
  5. ASU professors among first class of American Astronomical Society Fellows, Arizona State University, March 5, 2020, retrieved 2022-05-28
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