Russell co-wrote an influential two-volume textbook in 1927 with
Raymond Smith Dugan and
John Quincy Stewart:
Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy (Ginn & Co., Boston, 1926–27, 1938, 1945). This became the standard astronomy textbook for about two decades. There were two volumes: the first was
The Solar System and the second was
Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy. The textbook popularized the idea that a star's properties (radius, surface temperature,
luminosity, etc.) were largely determined by the star's mass and chemical composition, which became known as the
Vogt–Russell theorem (including Heinrich Vogt who independently discovered the result). Since a star's chemical composition gradually changes with age (usually in a non-homogeneous fashion),
stellar evolution results. Russell dissuaded
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin from concluding that the composition of the Sun is different from that of the Earth in her thesis, as it contradicted the accepted wisdom at the time. He realized she was correct four years later after deriving the same result by different means. In his paper Russell credited Payne with discovering that the Sun had a different chemical composition from Earth but never shared the rewards of the fame he readily accepted for her work which he’d failed to recognize until years later. • • • • ==Awards and honors==