Barbara Bell

Barbara Bell (April 1, 1922 – September 25, 2017) was an American astronomer, affiliated with Harvard College Observatory, now the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, for her entire career. In addition to her work in astronomy, she contributed to the field of climate history, with studies of ancient Egypt. Early life and education Bell was born in Evanston, Illinois, the daughter of George Irving Bell Sr. and Hazel Seerley Bell. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1944, then earned a PhD from Harvard University in 1951. Her dissertation, "A study of Doppler and damping effects in the solar atmosphere", was supervised by Donald Menzel, and won the Caroline Wilby Prize in 1951. Her younger brother George Irving Bell Jr. was a biophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Career Bell was an astronomer affiliated with Harvard College Observatory and the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian for over fifty years, working mainly on sunspots and other solar phenomena. She served on various committees of the International Astronomical Union. Bell also researched and wrote on the climate history of ancient Egypt; she is credited with being the first to explore climate change as a cause of famine and civil breakdown known as "The First Dark Age in Egypt", using records of the Nile's annual flood levels.