Role Astronomer | Name George Herbig Notable students Robert Kraft | |
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Born January 2, 1920Wheeling, West Virginia ( 1920-01-02 ) Residence Honolulu, Hawaii, United States | ||
Citizenship United States citizen Institutions University of Hawaii |
George Howard Herbig (January 2, 1920 – October 12, 2013) was an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. He is perhaps best known for the discovery of Herbig–Haro objects.
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Background

Born in 1920 in Wheeling, West Virginia, Herbig received his Ph.D in 1948 at the University of California, Berkeley; his dissertation is entitled A Study of Variable Stars in Nebulosity. His specialty was stars at an early stage of evolution (a class of intermediate mass pre–main sequence stars are named Herbig Ae/Be stars after him) and the interstellar medium. He was perhaps best known for his discovery, with Guillermo Haro, of the Herbig–Haro objects; bright patches of nebulosity excited by bipolar outflow from a star being born. Herbig has also made prominent contributions to the field of diffuse interstellar band (DIB) research, especially through a series of nine articles published between 1963 and 1995 entitled "The diffuse interstellar bands."
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Named after him