George O. Abell
George Ogden Abell (March 1, 1927 – October 7 1983) was an astronomer at UCLA who is best known for his catalogue of clusters of galaxies. His anaysis of these clusters developed our understanding of their formation and evolution. He demonstrated that second-order clustering existed and discovered how cluster luminosity could be used as a distance scale.
The Abell catalogue is an almost complete list of approximately 4000 clusters containing at least 30 members up to a redshift of z = 0.2. See List of galaxy clusters. The original catalogue of clusters in the northern hemisphere was published in 1958. The extended catalogue, including clusters in the southern hemisphere, was published posthumously in 1987 in collaboration with Corwin and Olowin.
Abell also co-discovered periodic comet 52P/Harrington-Abell.
Together with Peter Goldreich, he correctly determined that planetary nebulae evolve from red giants.
Abell was devoted to education and served for many years as faculty at the Summer Science Program for high school students. The program still memorializes him with its Abell Scholarship Fund.
He was involved in the production of the educational TV series Understanding Space and Time and Project Universe.
Dr. Abell was passionate about debunking pseudoscientific claims such as those by Immanuel Velikovsky. We was a co-founder of the Committee on Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and contributed articles to their journal, The Skeptical Inquirer.
Abell served as president of the Cosmology Commission of the International Astronomical Union and as president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He was elewcted a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1970. He was chairman of the UCLA Astronomy Department from 1968 to 1975. At the time of his death, he was to have become editor of the Astronomical Journal effective January 1 1984.
Minor planet 3449 Abell is named in his honor.
Abell received both his Bachelors and PhD (1957) from the California Institute of Technology.
Obituaries
Bibliography
- Abell, G.O., Morrison, D., and Wolff, S.C., Exploration of the Universe, Saunders College Pub; 6th/Rev edition (February, 1993) ISBN 0030946662
- Abell, G.O., Wolff, S.C., and Morrison, D., Realm of the Universe, Saunders College Publishing; 5th ed., 1994 edition (January, 1994) ISBN 0030016649
- Abell, G.O., Singer, B., Science and the Paranormal: Probing the Existence of the Supernatural, Scribner Book Company; Reprint edition (March, 1983) ISBN 0684178206
- Abell, G.O., A catalog of rich clusters of galaxies, American Astronomical Society (1989) ASIN B000726Y06