Otto Struve

Born Aug. 12, 1897, in Kharkov; died Apr. 6, 1963, in Berkeley, Calif. American astronomer.

The son of L. O. Struve, O. Struve graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1919. In 1920 he emigrated to the USA. He became an assistant in astronomy at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago in 1921. He was made a professor at the university in 1932. Between 1932 and 1947 he was director of the Yerkes and McDonald observatories. From 1959 to 1962 he was director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, W. Va. Struve was vice-president of the International Astronomical Union from 1948 to 1952 and president from 1952 to 1955. He became a foreign member of the Royal Society of London in 1952.

Struve’s research was devoted to problems in theoretical and applied stellar spectroscopy. He did work on the determination of the radial velocities of stars and investigated the phenomenon of stellar rotation. In addition, he carried out studies on the spectra of peculiar stars, interstellar gas, and H II fields of ionized hydrogen. He set forth a hypothesis on the evolution of stars.