Otto Struve - Honors

Astronomer, the great-grandson of Friedrich Struve, born in Kharkov, E Ukraine. His studies at Kharkov University were interrupted by the Revolution, when he joined the Imperial Russian army. He emigrated to the USA in 1921, and joined the staff of Yerkes Observatory, WI, where he became director in 1932. He is best known for his work in stellar spectroscopy, and for establishing the presence of hydrogen and other elements in interstellar space (1938). His major books include Stellar Evolution (1950), and The Universe (1962).

Asteroids discovered: 2

991 McDonalda	October 24, 1922
992 Swasey	November 14, 1922

Otto Struve (August 12, 1897 – April 6, 1963 ) was a Russian-American astronomer.

He was the son of Gustav Wilhelm Ludwig Struve, grandson of Otto Wilhelm von Struve and great-grandson of Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, who were Russian astronomers of ethnic German origin.

He interrupted his studies to enlist for World War I, and then during the Russian Civil War he fought on the side of the White Russian forces and was wounded. When it was clear that the Whites were losing the civil war, he retreated with them into exile, his father Ludwig Struve accompanying him as far as Sevastopol, where he died in November 1920. He wrote to his uncle Hermann Struve in Germany for assistance, but the latter had coincidentally also died a few months earlier.

Otto Struve then moved to the United States and began a prominent career in astronomy. They had no children, and thus the famous Struve astronomical dynasty came to an end.

Honors

Awards

Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1944) Bruce Medal (1948) Henry Draper Medal (1949) Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society (1957)

Named after him

Struve crater on the Moon (named for three of the Struve astronomers) Asteroid 2227 Otto Struve Otto Struve Telescope of McDonald Observatory