Happy Birthday, Vesto Slipher!

Vesto Melvin Slipher was an American astronomer born on November 11, 1875 and died almost a century later on November 8, 1969, mostly remembered today for his contributions to understanding the ever-expanding nature of the Universe.  By performing the first measurements of the radial velocities for galaxies, he laid the groundwork for Hubble’s Law.  Slipher earned his Ph.d at Indiana University and then spent his entire career at the Lowell Observatory, overseeing Clyde Tombaugh (whom he hired) and the discovery of Pluto.  He won many of astronomy’s most prestigious prizes, including the Bruce medal, the Lalande Prize, the Henry Draper Medal and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.  Despite this illustrious career, not much is named for him:  the Slipher Crater on the moon (pictured), a crater on Mars and an asteroid (1766 Slipher).  Happy Birthday, Vesto!

Image of the lunar crater top and Martian crater bottom, but courtesy NASA in the public domain.