Helen Dodson Prince

Helen Dodson Prince, one of the original pioneer’s in solar flare astronomy was born on this day in 1905. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she went to Goucher College in nearby Towson with a full scholarship in mathematics. She turned to astronomy and graduated in 1927. Funded by grants and private charity, she earned the Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Michigan under the direction of Heber Doust Curtis in 1933. Dodson taught at Wellesley College from 1933 until 1943, when she went on leave to spend the last three years of World War II at the MIT Radiation Laboratory working on radar. She returned to Goucher after the war as professor of astronomy and mathematics, and in 1947 she came back to Michigan both as professor of astronomy and staff member of the McMath-Hulbert Observatory, of which she became associate director. For many years the University of Michigan was the sole major American research university to have two women holding professorial positions in astronomy: Helen Dodson Prince and Hazel Marie Losh. During her lifetime she published over 130 articles, mostly on her research specialty, solar flares. According to her obituary written by Rudi Paul Lindner ( http://aas.org/obituaries/helen-dodson-prince-1905-2002 ): “Among her great accomplishments was the Comprehensive Flare Index, a widely used measure of flare activity. A “real live wire” and “a marvelous woman,” in the words of students and colleagues, Dodson was also a kind and effective teacher, not at all vain about her accomplishments: She held that solar behavior has a way of making people humble.” In 1976 she retired from Michigan and spent her later years in Alexandria, Virginia. She passed away in 2002.

Date in History: 31 December 1905