Gérard de Vaucouleurs was a very important astronomer, but at the same time completely ignored by the “classic popularizers”.
I find very fascinating these “glimpses of the era” in which spectroscopy was already an established and refined method of investigation, although still under development.
In addition to this interesting study of Martian climate, he specialized in the study of galaxies, adding the category Sbd in the Hubble scheme, allowing a more precise classification of galaxies, especially spiral ones. He was co-author of the Reference Catalog of Bright Galaxies (1964) of which in 1991 came out the final version the Third Reference Catalog of Bright Galaxies, commonly abbreviated in astronomy as RC3, in which the galaxies cataloged are more than 23000. In 2007 by other astronomers, an atlas of galaxies with this classification was published for the first time.
He was honored by the American Astronomical Society with the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship award in 1988. In the same year he was also awarded the French Prix Jules Janssen prize.
This post has been automatically translated. See the original post here.