Marjorie Hall Harrison was born in Nottingham, England. In 1947, she authored one of the first scientific books, a dissertation while at the Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the University of Chicago in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The observatory, which calls itself "the birthplace of modern astrophysics," was founded in 1897 by George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles T. Yerkes...

 of the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, with the word "model

Mathematical model

A mathematical model is a description of a system using mathematical concepts and language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed mathematical modeling. Mathematical models are used not only in the natural sciences and engineering disciplines A mathematical model is a...

" in the title. This work describes the processes that fuel star

Star

A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...

s and is among the first works that endeavored to create detailed mathematical models for complex physical systems. Along with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, FRS ) was an Indian origin American astrophysicist who, with William A. Fowler, won the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics for key discoveries that led to the currently accepted theory on the later evolutionary stages of massive stars...

, George Gamow

George Gamow

George Gamow , born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov , was a Russian-born theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He discovered alpha decay via quantum tunneling and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, cosmic microwave...

 and G. Keller, Harrison published models in 1944, 1946 and 1947 discussing stars modeled with hydrogen

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is the chemical element with atomic number 1. It is represented by the symbol H. With an average atomic weight of , hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant chemical element, constituting roughly 75% of the Universe's chemical elemental mass. Stars in the main sequence are mainly...

-depleted and isothermal core

Core

- Science and Academics :* Core , in mathematics, an object in group theory* Core , in mathematics, a subset of the domain of a closable operator* Core , in mathematics, the homomorphically minimal subgraph of a graph...

s.

As a doctoral student of S. Chandrasekhar at the University of Chicago, she received a degree in astronomy in 1947.

A brother, Sir Arnold Alexander Hall

Arnold Alexander Hall

Sir Arnold Alexander Hall FRS was a British aeronautical engineer, scientist, and industrialist.-Life:Hall was born in Liverpool, and attended Alsop High School in Walton, before going to Clare College, Cambridge, where he won several prizes As a postgraduate he worked with Frank Whittle, then...

, was noted for the design of gyroscopic gun-sights for D-day fighter aircraft, the compressor for Frank Whittle's first jet engine and the 1954 investigation of the various crashes involving the de Havilland Comet 1. Another brother, Cecil Hall, was one of Eli Franklin Burton

Eli Franklin Burton

Eli Franklin Burton, was a Canadian physicist.Burton was born in Green River, township of Pickering, Ontario, Canada. He graduated from the University of Toronto in 1901. From 1904 to 1906 he studied colloids with J. J. Thomson at the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, writing...

's graduate students who build the first practical electron microscope

Electron microscope

An electron microscope is a type of microscope that uses a beam of electrons to illuminate the specimen and produce a magnified image. Electron microscopes have a greater resolving power than a light-powered optical microscope, because electrons have wavelengths about 100,000 times shorter than...

at the University of Toronto in 1938.