George Herbig
American astronomer (1920–2013)
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Through Star, Stellar evolution and Asteroid
Background
Born in 1920 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Herbig received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948 at the University of California, Berkeley; his dissertation is titled A Study of Variable Stars in Nebulosity.
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Career
His specialty was stars at an early stage of evolution (a class of intermediate mass pre–main sequence stars are named Herbig Ae/Be stars after him) and the interstellar medium. He was perhaps best known for his discovery, with Guillermo Haro, of the Herbig–Haro objects; bright patches of nebulosity excited by bipolar outflow from a star being born.
Herbig also made prominent contributions to the field of diffuse interstellar band (DIB) research, especially through a series of nine articles published between 1963 and 1995 entitled "The diffuse interstellar bands."
Honors
Awards
- Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy of the American Astronomical Society (1955)
- Foreign Scientific Member, Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg
- Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the AAS (1975)
- Médaille, Université de Liège (1969)
- Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (1980)
- Petrie Prize and Lectureship of the Canadian Astronomical Society (1995)
Named after him
- Asteroid 11754 Herbig
- Herbig Ae/Be stars
- Herbig–Haro objects