Harlow Shapley Project

The New Yorker profiled Brother Guy Consolmagno, the “Pope’s Astronomer,” but left out a key part of the story: his early mentor was Mildred Shapley Matthews, daughter of Harlow Shapley. Their collaboration shaped his first scientific publications and tied his career to the Shapley family’s wider legacy in astronomy.

“How Edwin Hubble Expanded the Universe” is a cover story in Astronomy Now magazine.

The rise of modern Mexican astronomy was due to some remarkable Mexicans and a Turkish-Armenian who studied at the Harvard College Observatory in the late 1930s and early 1940s and the passion of HCO Director Harlow Shapley for astronomy as an international science.

Martha Betz Shapley (1890 - 1981) was the wife of Harlow Shapley (1885 - 1972). Deborah Shapley, a granddaughter of Martha and Harlow, recently spoke with Ron Voller on his podcast Bang! Goes the Universe.

The universe could have 100 million “life theaters” - planets that orbit in the zone of “the liquid water belt” around their stars - and thus “we are not alone.” This was Harlow Shapley’s scientific conclusion that he shared widely starting in 1953…

Martha Betz Shapley was known as First Lady of the Harvard College Observatory during the 32 years her husband Harlow was its Director. “The friendship and hospitality she extended to members of the Harvard astronomical family…was one of the highest experiences of my younger days,” wrote Leo Goldberg on her death in 1981.