Tom Bolton

Charles Thomas Bolton (April 15, 1943 – ) was an American-Canadian astronomer who was one of the first in his field to present strong evidence of the existence of a stellar-mass black hole.

Biography Bolton was born in Camp Forrest, a military base in Tullahoma, Tennessee.

In 1970, Bolton developed the first computer models for stellar spectra that were precise enough to compare with data from real stars. Bolton observed star HDE 226868 wobble as if it were orbiting around an invisible but massive companion emitting powerful X-rays, independently of the work by Louise Webster and Paul Murdin, at the Royal Greenwich Observatory. Further analysis gave an estimate about the amount of mass needed for the gravitational pull, which proved to be too much for a neutron star. After more observations confirmed the results, by 1973, the astronomical community generally recognized black hole Cygnus X-1, lying in the plane of the Milky Way galaxy at a galactic latitude of about 3 degrees.

In 1985, Bolton and Douglas Gies showed that hot, massive "runaway OB stars" (stars that travel at an abnormally high velocity relative to the surrounding interstellar medium), could be accelerated through stellar interactions within star clusters, in addition to being ejected from binary systems after supernova explosions. He was a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.