Anne Cowley
American astronomer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
American astronomer From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anne Pyne Cowley is an American astronomer known for her spectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes, including the 1983 discovery of a likely black hole in LMC X-3, an X-ray binary star system in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This became the first known extragalactic stellar black hole,[1][2] and the second known stellar black hole after Cygnus X-1.[2] She is a professor emerita at Arizona State University.[3]
Anne Cowley | |
|---|---|
Anne Cowley at the 138th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Michigan State University | |
| Alma mater | Wellesley College University of Michigan |
| Known for | Spectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes |
| Spouse | Charles R. Cowley |
| Awards | Alumnae Achievement Award |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Chicago University of Michigan Arizona State University |
Cowley is a 1959 graduate of Wellesley College, where she became interested in astronomy after taking a general education course on the subject. She went to the University of Michigan for graduate study in astronomy, earned a Ph.D. there, and met her eventual husband, astronomer Charles R. Cowley.[1]
She continued as a researcher at the University of Chicago until 1967, when she returned to the University of Michigan as a research scientist. In 1983, she took a professorship at Arizona State University.[1]
In 1986, Wellesley College gave Cowley their Alumnae Achievement Award.[1] She was named a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.[4][5]
