Alice Grace CookFRAS (18 February 1877 - 27 May 1958), known as Grace Cook or A. Grace Cook was a British astronomer. Cook lived in Stowmarket, Suffolk.[1] After she died she was remembered by her colleagues as a skilled and dedicated observer.[2] In September 2021 it was announced that a new school in the town was to be named after Grace Cook.[3] The school will be run by the Orwell Multi Academy Trust.[4] In March 2023 minor planet 2000 EY156 was named Gracecook in her honour.[5]
Career
Grace Cook attended a series of lectures in astronomy given by Joseph Hardcastle in the autumn of 1909. Enthused she joined the British Astronomical Association on 22 February 1911 at the invitation of Hardcastle.[6][7] Cook observed the 7 November 1914 transit of Mercury from her observatory.[8] In January 1916 Cook was among the first group of women elected as Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society.[9] Her RAS election was proposed by W F Denning. With Joseph Alfred Hardcastle, Cook worked to identify and describe 785 New General Catalogue objects on the 206 plates of the John Franklin-Adams photographic survey.[10][11] She was renowned for her work observing meteors, and also observed naked-eye phenomena including the zodiacal light and aurorae. During World War One Cook, with Fiammetta Wilson, temporarily headed the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section.[12] Cook observed comets and Milky Way novae and was among the first people to see V603 Aquilae, a nova discovered in June 1918.[13] This work earned her the Edward C. Pickering Fellowship from the Maria Mitchell Association in 1920–1921.[14] From 1921 to 1923 Cook was sole director of the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section.[15] On 30 May 1922 she attended the RAS Centenary celebrations held at Burlington House where she appears in the group photograph identified as number 16.[16]