Anne Cowley
{{Short description|American astronomer}}{{Infobox scientist
| name = Anne Cowley
| image = Portrait of Anne Cowley.jpg
| caption = Anne Cowley at the 138th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), Michigan State University
| workplaces = University of Chicago
University of Michigan
Arizona State University
| alma_mater = Wellesley College
University of Michigan
| known_for = Spectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes
| awards = Alumnae Achievement Award
| spouse = Charles R. Cowley
}}
{{Use mdy dates|cs1-dates=ly|date=May 2022}}
{{Use list-defined references|date=May 2022}}
Anne Pyne Cowley is an American astronomer known for her spectroscopic observations of stars and stellar black holes, including the 1983 discovery of a likely black hole in LMC X-3, an X-ray binary star system in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This became the first known extragalactic stellar black hole,{{r|alum|nyt}} and the second known stellar black hole after Cygnus X-1.{{r|nyt}} She is a professor emerita at Arizona State University.{{r|asu}}
Education and career
Cowley is a 1959 graduate of Wellesley College, where she became interested in astronomy after taking a general education course on the subject. She went to the University of Michigan for graduate study in astronomy, earned a Ph.D. there, and met her eventual husband, astronomer Charles R. Cowley.{{r|alum}}
She continued as a researcher at the University of Chicago until 1967, when she returned to the University of Michigan as a research scientist. In 1983, she took a professorship at Arizona State University.{{r|alum}}
Recognition
In 1986, Wellesley College gave Cowley their Alumnae Achievement Award.{{r|alum}} She was named a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.{{r|aas1|aas2}}
References
{{reflist|refs=
{{citation|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1983/01/07/us/black-hole-star-is-believed-found.html|title='Black hole' star is believed found|first=Walter|last=Sullivan|date=January 7, 1983|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=2022-05-28}}
}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cowley, Anne}}
Category:Year of birth missing (living people)
Category:20th-century American astronomers
Category:American women astronomers
Category:Wellesley College alumni
Category:University of Michigan alumni