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- <text id=94TT0862>
- <title>
- Jul. 04, 1994: Died:William Morgan
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1994
- Jul. 04, 1994 When Violence Hits Home
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- MILESTONES, Page 17
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <p> DIED. WILLIAM MORGAN, 88, astronomer; in Williams Bay, Wisconsin.
- One of the most accomplished U.S. scientists of this century,
- he was a co-developer of the Morgan Keenan system for determining
- the luminosity of stars and hence their distance from earth--an invention he used as the foundation for his greatest discovery:
- the spiral structure of the Milky Way (determining the shape
- of humanity's home galaxy proved perplexing because our solar
- system is embedded within it). When Morgan unveiled his findings
- at a 1951 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, proving
- the existence of two vast spiral arms and evidence of a third,
- usually staid colleagues rose in a thunderous ovation.
- </p>
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
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