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Scientist

R. A. Rossiter

1886–1977 · astronomy, astrophysics
American astronomer, jointly with D. B. McLaughlin discovered the Rossiter–McLaughlin effect, which allows measuring the projection of a star's rotation onto the line of sight by the distortion of radial velocity curves during eclipses. The effect is widely applied in studies of transiting exoplanets to determine the orientation of planetary orbits relative to the rotation of the parent stars.

Biography

Richard Alfred Rossiter was born in 1886. He was educated at the University of Michigan, where he worked for most of his career at the observatory. He studied binary stars, variable stars, and galactic rotation. His first scientific publication on the effect of radial velocity distortion due to stellar rotation was published in 1924 based on observations of the Beta Lyrae system.

Key discoveries

💡 Rossiter published his work on the influence of rotation on radial velocities in the same year as McLaughlin (1924), but they worked independently. The effect was recognized only many years after the first works.
"He noted that observing the rotation of stars through their spectra opened a new era in astrophysics."
Concepts
exoplanetexoplanet atmospherespectroscopytransit method
Laws
Doppler effect
Scientists
Robert HookeJohann Jakob BalmerJocelyn Bell BurnellArno PenziasCharles TownesJames Clerk MaxwellErwin SchrödingerCecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

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