The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1933-07-07
-Dietz on Science
DAvID-COLIATH
PARALLEL SET
BY PROFESSOR
Diminutive Harvard Savant
Leads World in Space
Research.
BY DAVID DIETZ
ScrippS-Howard Science Editor

If you saw him hurrying across
the Harvard campus, you might at
first glance mistake him for sopho-
more. A second glance would re-
veal that he was a little older, and
perhaps you would think he was
one of the young instructors.
Certainly, you never would guess
that this youthful looking man Of
less than average height and weight,
smooth-shaven and with mild eyes
and wiStful smile, was one OF the
worlds most famous scientists.
But life has a way. at times, OF
breaking the traditions Of noveliStS
and playwrightS, and the fact of
the matter is that the man we are
referring to is DR. Harlow Shapley,
director of the Harvard obServa-
tory, one of the worlds most brill
liant astronomers, and one of the
worlds authority upon the subject
of the Einstein theory.
DR.. Shapley insists upon defying
all the traditions. Although 46, he
insists upon looking more like 90
He simply won't look as old and
dignified as a scientist is supposed to
look. He. has a genuine sense of
hunor and keeps it working. And
he has a hobby. His hobby is the
study of ants.
Ants Are Hobby
When DR.. Shapley was at the Mt.
Wilson observatory few years ago,
the astronomers always knew where
to find him if he was not at the
telescope. The chances we're pretty
good that he would be studying a
certain large ant hill.
Because of his modest stature, it
is reasonable to refer to Shapley as
an astronomical David. The Goliath
he chose to tackle was the entire
universe.
He battled lesser giants from time
to time, as for example variable
stars, or star clusters consisting of
thousands of stars. Once or twice,
he has taken on the whole Milky
way, and lately he has been con-
cerned with clouds of spiral nebulae,
each nebulae the equivalent of ten
billion stars or so. But the universe
as a whole was his Goliath.
Shapley's chief work has been
pushing out the limits of the uni
verse. It is thanks to his work
in this line that we realize today
how very large the visible universe
is.
New Theory Accepted
It was shortly after Shapley had
been awarded his Phi. D. degree at
Princeton that he began his work.
He was then an astronomer at the
Mt. Wilson observatory.
He began the extension of the
universe by showing that the Ma
gellanic Clouds were much further
away than previously had been sup
posed.
The Magellanic Clouds are in the
southern skies and hence invisible
from the United States. They are
luminous cloud-like objects, re-
sembling pieces of the Milky Way
which had broken loose. They re-
ceived their name from the fact
that they were first described by
Magellan during his voyage around
the world
Shapley proved that the larger of
the two clouds was 10000 light
years away and the smaller one
about 100000 light-years away.
Distance Is Established
He showed also the vast extent of
our Milky Way by a study of the
globular clusters which outline it.
Today Shapley is the worlds chief
authority upon globular clusters.
Within recent years, Shapley has
been working on the spiral nebulae,
the great masses of baseous ma
terial and star clouds which lie at
immense distances from the Milky
WaV.