Margaret Mayall

Margaret Walton Mayall (January 27, 1902 – December 6, 1995) was an American astronomer. She was the director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) from 1949 to 1973.^[1]

Mayall (born Margaret Lyle Walton) was born in Iron Hill, Maryland, on 27 January 1902.^[1] She attended the University of Delaware and Swarthmore College. She earned an MA in Astronomy from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, in 1928. She worked as a research assistant and astronomer at Harvard College Observatory from 1924 to 1954, and was at the Heat Research Laboratory, Special Weapons Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1943 to 1946.^[2]

While working in Nantucket, she met Robert Newton Mayall, a member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO). They married in 1927.^[1]

In 1958 she won the Annie J. Cannon Award in Astronomy.^[1]

She died of congestive heart failure in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 6 December 1995.^[1]

References

External links

• Letters at the AAVSO
• Oral history from the American Institute of Physics
• The Harold C. Ernst Collection of Portable Sundials

Further reading

• Williams, Thomas R.; Saladyga, Michael (2011). Advancing Variable Star Astronomy: The Centennial History of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-49634-6.