Hélène R. Dickel

Hélène R. Dickel (born 1938) co-discovered the first formaldehyde maser in May 1979. She made some of the first images of molecular distributions with the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope in the Netherlands, the Very Large Array of Radio Telescopes of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, and the millimeter array of the Berkeley-Illinois-Maryland Association (BIMA) for which she was the BIMA Scheduler from 1994 to 1998.

Life and education Dickel holds a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Mount Holyoke College (1959), and earned her master's and Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Michigan in 1961 and 1964, respectively.

Hélène Dickel is married to fellow astronomer and University of Illinois professor, John R. Dickel.

Work From 1977 to 2001, Dickel was a research professor in Astronomy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In 1969, with J.H. Bieritz, and German astronomer Heinrich Wendker, Dickel published The Dickel, Wendker, Bieritz (DWB) Catalog; a list of 193 Hydrogen II regions contained within the Cygnus X star forming region in the Cygnus the Swan constellation. The regions were uncovered through mapping H-alpha emissions. The three authors had all worked together at the Vermillion River Observatory near Danville, Illinois. Dickel served in the American Chemical Society Speaker Service from 1986-2008 President of the IAU Commission 5 Working Group on Astronomical Designations from 1997-2003 Dickel is a member of:

Publications

H.R. Dickel, H. Wendker, and J.H. Bieritz. 1969. "The Cygnus X Region: V. Catalogue and Distances of Optically Visible H II Regions", Astronomy and Astrophysics 1, 270-280. J.R. Forster, W.M. Goss, T.L. Wilson, D. Downes, and H.R. Dickel. 1980. "A Formaldehyde Maser in NGC7538", Astronomy and Astrophysics. Vol. 84 (1-2), p. L1-L3. H.R. Dickel. 2016. "SMC 1 or What's in a Name?", Symposioum - International Astronomical Union. Volume 190: New Views of the Magellanic Clouds, 1999, pp. 17–18.