George Ellery Hale, American Astrophysicist

George Ellery Hale, American Astrophysicist

George Ellery Hale (1868-1938) was an American solar astronomer. He is known for inventing the spectroheliograph, with which he made his discovery of solar vortices. In 1908, he used the Zeeman effect with a modified spectroheliograph to establish that sunspots were magnetic. Subsequent work demonstrated a strong tendency for east-west alignment of magnetic polarities in sunspots, with mirror symmetry across the solar equator; and that the polarity in each hemisphere switched orientation from one sunspot cycle to the next. This systematic property of sunspot magnetic fields is now commonly referred to as the "Hale-Nicholson law," or in many cases simply "Hale's law." Hale played a key role in the building of the twentieth century's largest and most important telescopes, the University of Chicago's Yerkes refractor, the 100 inch reflector at Mount Wilson and the 200 inch reflector at Mount Palomar.

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