By devious ways over the past week I came to find a paper entitled 

The 1920 Shapley-Curtis Discussion:Background, Issues, and Aftermath, Virginia Trimble. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Vol. 107, pages 1133-1144, December  1995

1995PASP..107.1133T

This paper discusses something called The Great Debate of 1920 wherein two astronomers, Harlow Shapley and Heber D. Curtis, discussed the size of the universe, and whether there was one galaxy that we were all part of, or lots of galaxies. It was, in some sense, a really big deal where each of the participants had a piece of the truth and a piece of the not-truth, as seen in subsequent years. 

I found it fascinating because many names were quite familiar, from listening to Father talk. And because the author here is full of witty commentary. She says of the outcome of the Debate, “Shapley and Curtis each had hold of portions of the correct elephant.” Shapley eventually became the director of the Harvard Observatory, so it has to be his son with whom my father clashed. Cecilia Payne Gaposhkin (another name I can hear Father talking about) said of Shapley that his leadership style was “divide and rule.” Shapley forced her to switch her focus of research and gave her topic to Donald Menzies which “hurt her … without in the least making Menzies dislike Shapley less.” Nancy Roman, who wrote the overview at Father’s 1990’s farewell, is mentioned in connection with thinking about the size of the universe. 

Trimble mentions discussions on angular momentum, reminding me of how I disgraced myself laughing, the first time someone got up at a speech of Father’s and actually asked, “What about the angular momentum.” Mom had said they always, always asked that and they did. Trimble discusses the fact that Germany was banned from post-World War I international associations, something I had no notion of. She says of an idea — “That anyone could have entertained the idea for more than five minutes suggests a painful shortage of envelope backs.” She mentions a scientist named Arthur Noyes presenting some chemical ideas at the same conference as The Great Debate, but Trimble lists him as being also the brother of Alfred Noyes, poet, (author of The Highwayman).

Evidently, there was a “life-long coolness” between Shapley and Edwin Hubble. Trimble attributes this to the fact that during WWI Hubble was active in the Armed Forces and set aside his astronomy career temporarily, while Shapley followed up on an idea that Hubble had proposed, while Hubble was away. Hubble volunteered his services again in WWII and Shapley, again, did not.

One of Trimble’s more obscure references, that is still delightfully witty reading, is this one. She is discussing an astronomer from the 1800s named Simon Newcomb, and says, “It is widely believed that Newcomb is Walt Whitman’s ‘Learned Astronomer,’ but this should probably not be held against either one of them.” Here is part of the poem by Whitman

When I heard the learn’d astronomer, 

…..

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, 

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, 

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, 

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, 

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars. Walt Whitman

It’s a little bit rude… On a more serious note was another story about Cecilia Payne-Gaposhkin and Shapley, her boss. The realization of moments where he had been wrong in the Debate had just been made clear by some new discovery. He told her that he had been wrong because he had trusted the data of someone else, “because he was my friend.” Payne-Gaposhkin promised herself never to make the mistake of confusing friendship with correct data. Important lesson!

A few extra bon-mots from Trimble —

“Curtis … was a confirmed pipe-smoker, who sporadically set his waste-basket on fire.”   “Shapley shows a certain youthful exuberance in his distances.” (She means what he thinks the size of the universe is.)  “Jeans describes the Milky Way and other spirals as having the relationship of a cake to a bunch of bisquits[sic]”  “Shapley suggested seemingly with a straight face …”  “Easton’s … drawing gives the impression of a man struggling with the truth and losing.”

~+~+~+~+~

What caused me to do research that led to the above paper was a description of “our” view of the universe in 1913, from Mary Orr Evershed’s book about Dante and the heavens. She includes a “modern” overview of the heavens, to compare with the medieval view she has just expounded. Mary Orr is the astronomer that George pointed me towards, sending me a book about her life. Her own book can be found on Project Gutenberg, and a direct link to the page I was reading is provided.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/64489/pg64489-images.html#Page_487

I struggle to read this book straight through but it is a delight to dip in and out of. I found this sentence to be one of those delights. 

The sun is enormously larger than Dante thought, larger than all the planets put together, large enough for our moon’s whole orbit to fit comfortably inside.

Yikes! If you had ever asked me how big the sun was I would have said, Big. And I’ve certainly been told that you could fit so many earths across its diameter but that little sentence above really shifted my imagination. Give it some thought!