Word: shapleys
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...post-war organization of UNESCO and other groups for international cooperation. But a visit to Russia's Science Jubilee and his stand against rough treatment for the soviets brought charges of "sympathizer," and an eventual clash with Congressman Rankin's Un-American Activities committee. "The insinuations were unbelievable," Shapley recalls, "I'm as strong an anti-communist as the average American, probably more so." With a grandfather who was an underground slave runner, Shapley believes in "vigorous citizenship--and I've got three hundred years of ancestors to back...
Full clearance came from the Tydings senate Committee in 1950. Perhaps more significant, fellow scientists showed their faith in Shapley by electing him President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science a month after his wrangle with Congressman Rankin...
...addition to his honor as Association President, Shapley has won awards from 12 foreign countries and is present Chairman of the International Observatory Commission. His achievements in Who's Who take up nearly six inches of fine spring, and new obligations fill his desk each day. Many of the bids are for speaking engagements, for his is a witty, articulate, even impassioned lecturer. He spices authority with delightful anecdotes from his numerous activities...
...Among Shapley's interests are his ant theories--"I've picked the creatures off stone walls in dozens of counties"--and his debunking of pseudo-science. At a faculty gathering, for example, a fellow professor recalls Shapley's pacing about the lawn with a divining fork, "only to reveal a Princeton instructor's hidden bottle...
...Shapley's major pursuit is charting the heavens. He has great enthusiasm in his cosmography course for non-scientists, requiring only a "persistent curiosity" for this inquiry into man's place on Observatory Hill. Here, lighting a cigar, writing to his science friends who include the Pope, or plotting some new star, he shows himself to be a man and an astronomer of the first magnitude...