George Herbig

George Howard Herbig (January 2, 1920 – October 12, 2013) was an American astronomer at the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy.

[2][3] Born in 1920 in Wheeling, West Virginia,[4] Herbig received his Doctor of Philosophy in 1948 at the University of California, Berkeley; his dissertation is titled A Study of Variable Stars in Nebulosity.

His specialty was stars at an early stage of evolution (a class of intermediate mass pre–main sequence stars are named Herbig Ae/Be stars after him) and the interstellar medium.

He was perhaps best known for his discovery, with Guillermo Haro, of the Herbig–Haro objects; bright patches of nebulosity excited by bipolar outflow from a star being born.

Herbig also made prominent contributions to the field of diffuse interstellar band (DIB) research, especially through a series of nine articles published between 1963 and 1995 entitled "The diffuse interstellar bands."