Adelaide Ames

Ames attended Vassar College from 1918 to1922, then studied at Radcliffe College, where there was a recently created graduate program in astronomy. While in college, she aspired to become a journalist and reported for the Vassar Miscellany News, in addition to taking astronomy classes. Ames became the Harvard College Observatory’s first graduate student in astronomy in January 1923. Ames graduated in 1924 as the first woman with an M.A in astronomy at Radcliffe. Ames was a member of the American Astronomical Society and was elected to the International Committee on Nebulae and Clusters in 1928. Originally she had planned to become a journalist, but she found no work in the area and instead accepted a job as a research assistant at the Harvard College Observatory (HCO), a position she held until her death. ==Research at Harvard==

In 1921, Harlow Shapley became director of HCO, and soon afterward hired Ames as an assistant. Her early work at Harvard focused on the identification of NGC/IC objects. In 1926, she and Shapley published several articles on the shapes, colors, and diameters of 103 NGC galaxies. In 1930, she published A catalog of 2778 nebulae including the Coma-Virgo group, which identified 214 NGC and 342 IC objects in the area of the Virgo Cluster. Shapley-Ames Catalog During her tenure at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked together with Harlow Shapley on the Shapley-Ames catalog, which lists galaxies beyond the 13th magnitude. From their observations of approximately 1250 galaxies, they found evidence of clustering near the north pole of the Milky Way that differs from the south pole. These results were significant as their finding of "general unevenness in distribution" of galaxies deviated from the assumption of isotropy. == Family ==

Adelaide Ames's father was T.L. Ames, who served as a colonel in the U.S. Army. Her mother was Margetta Nataline Kelton Ames. They were described by their friends as devoted and adoring parents, as Ames had no siblings. Ames often traveled to army based throughout the world with her parents, spending periods of time living in the Philippines and Washington D.C.. ==See also==