Barbara Cherry Schwarzschild (1914-2008) worked at the HCO from approximately 1935 to 1938.1 She was an undergraduate student in astronomy at Radcliffe, was a graduate student at the HCO for one year, and then served as an assistant to Harvard astronomer Dr. Bart Bok for another year.2
Cherry Schwarzchild chose to leave the HCO to pursue a career in teaching. Dr. Bok encouraged her to remain at the HCO to earn her PhD in astronomy, saying that she had the potential to win the Annie Jump Cannon Award someday, but she felt that teaching better suited her life aims. Her husband, who she met while at the HCO, later mentioned in an interview that being a woman, in a time where women were not allowed to use the large telescopes at the Harvard’s Oak Ridge Observatory (now known as the George R. Agassiz Station), had some impact on her decision to leave.3
Cherry Schwarzschild was a member of the Radiation Laboratory at M.I.T. from 1942-1945. She married German Jewish astronomer Martin Schwarzschild in 1945 after he returned from serving as a US Army intelligence officer in World War II.4 The couple lived in New York City for two years while he taught at Columbia University, and in 1947 they moved to Princeton, New Jersey in order for him to take a professorship of astronomy and astrophysics at Princeton University.5
During their time at Princeton, Cherry Schwarzschild collaborated with her husband on several astronomy research papers and served as the president of the Princeton League of Women Voters. She also pursued an interest in photographing birds, and she gave lectures about birds to children and published a book about birds called Guppy Grebe. The couple particularly enjoyed making cross-country car trips to use the telescopes at west coast observatories.
Cherry Schwarzchild was born in Boston in 1914 to Martin and Evelyn Cherry. She died on December 22nd, 2008 in Newtown, Pennsylvania at the age of 94.6
Written by Elizabeth Coquillette, 2022
Citations:
1-Lindsay Smith Zrull, “Women in Glass: Women at the Harvard Observatory during the Era of Astronomical Glass Plate Photography, 1875-1975,” Journal of the History of Astronomy, vol. 52, no. 2 (2021): 133.↩
2-Interview of Martin Schwarzschild by Spencer Weart on June 3 1997, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics, College Park, MD USA.
3-Ibid.↩
4- “New Honorary Member: Dr. Martin Schwarzschild” Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, vol. 57 (1963): 123.↩
5-David M. Herszenhorn, “Martin Schwarzschild, 94, Innovative Astronomer,” The New York Times, April 12, 1997.↩
6- Ibid.↩