Harlow Shapley - King Of The Galaxies

Modern cosmologists have more powerful tools and much more information at their disposal than did the pioneers of cosmology, and yet they are still far from a consensus on the nature and origin of the universe.
Harlow Shapley, Galaxies, p. 227

There is the well documented story that Harlow Shapley picked astronomy out of the university catalog simply because he could not pronounce archeology! All one can conclude that it was a very bad day for archeology. Instead of knowing where we are in our own galaxy of the Milky Way, we could quiet possibly have had the Ark of the Covenant hanging by piano wire in the Smithsonian, with the Ten Commandments as a side exhibit! But fate choose astronomy and Harrison Ford never had to get a real job. 

Harlow Shapley

It was just this morning that I finished reading his book Galaxies, third edition 1975, and Dear Reader it was a page turner from front to back. I bought the book in a used book store, knowing that it was a classic. But once I got into it, I soon came to the conclusion that it was all much more than that. Old Harlow had quiet the cosmological bent to his nature and he was beholden to no standard model save and except the Hubble redshift, and even that only up to a point.

Globular Cluster NGC 6397

And as you read on you come across some very interesting names, such as Halton Arp and Vera Rubin. Haltan Arp found that Quasers come from the center of galaxies. And Vera Rubin discovered the galaxy rotation problem, which led to the deferent  and epicycle that the bangers created and called Dark Matter! Harlow Shapely had a great knack for the correct theory and for great talent. These stories are still unfolding and are not yet "in and done", but the writing is on the wall so to speak.

 Another thing that I got from reading Harlow Shapley is that interest in globular clusters, which Halton Arp worked on early in his career. There are still a ton of unanswered questions on that topic even at the time of this writing. Among the details lies a great and dramatic truth, I am certain. He also made a very great long shot observation in passing regarding the possibility that if the universe is large enough, distant galaxies could actually be receding faster than the speed of light! But I will cover that in another post at a future time.

There is some great legacy footage on Harlow Shapley on You Tube. The first is an actual interview clip. Which I simply must include in this post. And it is pretty cosmological.
 

 The second awesome piece of archive footage is a recent lecture on Harlow Shapley by one of his long ago students! And it is fascinating, I watched it right through enthralled. The reason Harlow Shapley looms so large on the horizon of astronomical history is that he was one of the last great astronomers before the big science of today, that is complete with talking points but somewhat short on substance.