Photo courtesy Prof. Herbig and University of California, Santa Cruz
George Howard Herbig
2 January 1920	1980 Bruce Medalist

George Herbig earned his bachelor’s degree at UCLA and his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. His thesis research on T Tauri stars was performed at the Lick Observatory. In 1948, he joined the staff of Lick, which became part of the University of California, Santa Cruz in the late 1960s. He designed the coudé spectrograph for the Shane 3-m telescope at Lick. In 1988 he moved to the University of Hawaii, where he is now investigating diffuse interstellar bands found in the spectra of stars and very faint young stars in Galactic clusters. Herbig is known for his spectroscopic studies of young stars, star formation, and the interstellar medium. He has found and investigated many H-alpha emission objects, T Tauri stars, and peculiar stars. He and Guillermo Haro independently discovered the Herbig-Haro objects, gas clouds associated with young stars. Herbig has shown that lithium abundance is correlated with age in young stars, and he has investigated rotation rates of stars of different spectral class.

Personal Web Page
At the University of Hawaii

Presentation of Bruce medal
Mercury 9, 159 (1980).

Other awards
American Astronomical Society, Helen B. Warner Prize, 1955; Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, 1975.

Biographical materials
Nakaso, Dan, Honolulu Advertiser, 16 August 2009

Portraits
AIP Center for History of Physics
University of Chicago Archival Photographic Files

Named after him
Minor Planet #11754 Herbig
Herbig-Haro objects (with Guillermo Haro)
Herbig Ae and Be (HAEBE) stars

More references