biography
| name: |
Slipher, Vesto Melvin
|
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1875–1969)
|
| biography:
| Astronomer, born in Mulberry, Indiana, USA. He studied at Indiana University, then worked for over 50 years at the Lowell Observatory, AZ (from 1901), becoming its director in 1926. He used spectroscopic techniques to measure the Doppler shift in light reflected from the edges of planetary discs, thereby determining the periods of rotation of Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, and Mars in 1912. He also discovered the general recession of galaxies (outside the Local Group) from our own galaxy, a result later seen to be in accord with the idea of an expanding universe. |
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