Biography
Seyfert grew up in Cleveland, then attended Harvard University, starting in 1929. He earned his B.S. degree there, and then his M.S. degree (1933). In 1936 he received his Ph.D. in astronomy. His thesis was "Studies of the External Galaxies", supervised by Harlow Shapley. The thesis dealt with colors and magnitudes of galaxies.
In 1936 he joined the staff of the new McDonald Observatory in Texas, where he helped get the observatory started. He stayed until 1940, working with Daniel M. Popper on the properties of faint B stars and continuing his work on colors in spiral galaxies.
In 1940 he went to Mt. Wilson Observatory as a fellow with the National Research Council. He stayed until 1942, studying a class of active galaxies now called Seyfert galaxies. In 1942 he returned to Cleveland, at Case Institute of Technology, where he taught navigation to military personnel and participated in secret military research. He also carried out some astronomical research at the Warner and Swasey Observatory of the Case Institute.
In 1946 he joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. The astronomy program at Vanderbilt was very small at the time. The university had only a small observatory, equipped with a 6-inch (150 mm) refractor, and only a modest teaching program.
Seyfert worked diligently to improve the teaching program and to raise funds to build a new observatory. Within a few years, he had obtained significant public support from the Nashville community. As the result, the Arthur J. Dyer Observatory with its 24-inch (610 mm) reflector was completed in December 1953. Seyfert became director of the new observatory, a position he held until his death.
He died in an automobile accident in Nashville on June 13, 1960.
Read more about this topic: Carl Keenan Seyfert
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