Life long study of astronomy

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33121, 11 January 1973, Page 5

Life long study of astronomy

Dr Tinsley, a visiting theoretical astrophysicist at the Institute for Physical Sciences, at the University of Texas at Dallas, has no ambition to go to the Moon.

As an astronomer her in-i terest is in galaxies and: there is no possibility of reaching even the nearest of them by manned spacecraft. “It would take about a million years to get from the Earth to the closest galaxies at the speed of light, which is the fastest form of travel,” she said yesterday. “My interest in outer space is that galaxies can be seen much clearer from up there! by telescope than from the: Earth.” OUTSTANDING CAREER Dr Tinsley’s interest in astronomy goes back to her teen-age years when a pupil at New Plymouth Girls’ High School. “Astronomy was the only! thing I ever wanted to do as! a career,” she said yester-| day. ’ |

; It has been an outstanding (career. After graduating M.Sc. in Physics at the Uni-: ! versify of Canterbury in 1963 j . she went to the University! of Texas at Austin in 1967' and gained a Ph.D. in Astronomy. She has won many' university awards in New; Zealand and two in the! United States. She has more than 20 publications, mainly: on the evolution of stars in (galaxies, to her credit and she has contributed about six papers to scientific meetings ' in the United States. Last year she was a visiting associate at Hale Observatories, California Institute of Technology. She is on a month’s tour iof her homeland with her ( husband and two young I children.