Erika Böhm-Vitense RIP

[Putaendo Patrick]

Saddened to hear of the death of Erika Böhm-Vitense on January 21st.

Böhm-Vitense was born in Germany in 1923 and first studied in Tübingen in 1943. In 1945 she moved to the University of Kiel where she completed her doctorate under the direction of Albrecht Unsöld. Her disertation, Über die mittleren Zustandsgrößen der Sternatmosphären als Funktion von Effektivtemperatur und Leuchtkraft, won a prize.

I believe she moved to the USA in the 1960s and was for a number of years professor of astronomy at the University of Washington. She retired with the title of Emeritus Professor. In 1965, she received the Annie J. Cannon Award from the American Astronomical Society and in 2003, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Germany.

Erika Böhm-Vitense will perhaps be best remembered for her notable three volume work Introduction to Stellar Astrophysics published by Cambridge University Press between 1989 and 1992.