Drawing on one of the most famous debates in scientific history, Deborah Shapley poses the question whether head-to-head conflict is a model that benefits science. She offers a wider version of the story of her grandfather Harlow Shapley’s loss after 1920 debate with Heber Curtis, at which Shapley argued “island universes” were located inside our Milky Way Galaxy. But in the 1920s when Edwin Hubble sent him evidence these “nebulae” were way beyond our galaxy, Shapley pivoted to the view he had opposed. For decades afterward, Shapley pushed scientific work on galaxy distribution and spread public knowledge of this unfolding universe.

Preface: Why this Book Matters

“I would often look out my window on the top floor and see two or four at play with the rubber ring on the deck tennis court next to the woods. Bart Bok, Fred Whipple, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Martin Schwartzschild, to name only a few, tried their skill at this game.”

Lloyd Shapley received the Nobel prize from King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the annual grand ceremony in December 2012. Among the Nobelists my uncle Lloyd was the tallest. At age 89, he was the oldest. Though wobbly he was dignified and humorous.

Harlow Shapley was very famous as a scientist. He located the center of the Milky Way galaxy, finding that our solar system is far from the Galactic Center. As Director from 1921 to 1953, Shapley built the Harvard College Observatory into the foremost US graduate school in astronomy and “a mecca” for astronomers from around the world. From 1953 Shapley published that life in the universe would arise on planets in “the liquid water belt” distance from their stars. This standard is applied in the search for extraterrestrial life today.