Hogg-Priestly, Helen Battles Sawyer

▪ 1994

      U.S.-born Canadian astronomer (b. Aug. 1, 1905, Lowell, Mass.—d. Jan. 28, 1993, Toronto, Ont.), was an internationally recognized expert in the field of variable stars within globular star clusters, and she spent her entire professional career cataloging these stars of changing brightness in the International Astronomical Almanac. Hogg-Priestly received an undergraduate degree (1926) from Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Mass., before earning a Ph.D. (1931) from Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Mass., where she became interested in star clusters. In 1935 she and her first husband, Frank Hogg, became affiliated with the University of Toronto. She served as a volunteer for a year before becoming a lecturer and research assistant there in 1936, spending much of her time at the David Dunlap Observatory at Richmond Hill, Ont. She became a professor of astronomy in 1957, a post she held until her retirement in 1976, when she was named professor emeritus. Besides her many scholarly writings, including The Stars Belong to Everyone (1976), Hogg-Priestly popularized her subject for the general public in "The Stars," a weekly column she wrote for the Toronto Daily Star from 1951 to 1981 (the piece had been written by her husband from 1941 until his death in 1951). In 1985 she married Francis E.L. Priestly, who died in 1988. For her work Hogg-Priestly was awarded the Annie J. Cannon Prize of the American Astronomical Society (1950), the Rittenhouse Silver Medal (1967), and the Companion of the Order of Canada (1976). In 1984 Asteroid 2917, which was discovered in 1980, was renamed Asteroid Sawyer Hogg.

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