Trumpler, Robert Julius

Robert Julius Trumpler, (born Oct. 2, 1886, Zürich—died Sept. 10, 1956, Berkeley, Calif., U.S.), Swiss-born U.S. astronomer who, in his extensive studies of galactic star clusters, demonstrated the presence throughout the galactic plane of a tenuous haze of interstellar material that absorbs light generally and decreases the apparent brightness of distant clusters.

Trumpler was educated in Switzerland and Germany, went to the United States in 1915, and joined the staff of Lick Observatory, Mount Hamilton, Calif., three years later. In 1922 he went to Wallal, W.Aus., Austl., on a solar eclipse expedition to test experimentally Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity by observing whether the Sun’s gravitational field indeed would bend the light from nearby stars. His observations confirmed Einstein’s theory, as had British astronomer Arthur Eddington’s observations of the 1919 eclipse. Trumpler transferred to the astronomy department of the University of California, Berkeley, in 1938 and retired in 1951.

Trumpler’s independent observations of galactic star clusters and the differences in them, which indicate their age, helped to provide the foundation of the present theory of stellar evolution. Probably the most successful scheme of classification of galactic clusters by appearance is Trumpler’s. He also devised a method of classification in terms of magnitude and spectral type.