[6] He worked as a journalist[7] after studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter for the Daily Sun in Chanute, Kansas, and intermittently for the Times of Joplin, Missouri.

[3] Shapley returned to complete a six-year high school program in 1.5 years, graduating as class valedictorian.

The debate took place on April 26, 1920, in the hall of the United States National Academy of Sciences in Washington DC.

The astronomical issues were soon resolved in favor of Curtis' position when Edwin Hubble discovered Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Galaxy.

[12][13] At the time of the debate, Shapley was working at the Mount Wilson Observatory, where he had been hired by George Ellery Hale.

After the debate, however, he was hired to replace the recently deceased Edward Charles Pickering as director of the Harvard College Observatory (HCO).

[citation needed] In the 1940s, Shapley helped found government funded scientific associations, including the National Science Foundation.

He shares credit with British biochemist Joseph Needham for the addition of the "S" in UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).

It had opposed re-election of U.S. Representative Joseph William Martin Jr. during mid-term elections that year and was asked to answer questions about the ICCASP's Massachusetts' chapter.

Shapley accused HCUA of "Gestapo methods" and advocated for its abolition, saying that it had made "civic cowards of many citizens" by pursuing the "bogey of political radicalism.

Four other global threats he listed were: drugs that suppressed the desire for sex, boredom, a world war with weapons of mass destruction, and a plague epidemic.

"[19] In 1950, Shapley was instrumental in organizing a campaign in academia against Worlds in Collision by Russian expatriate psychiatrist Immanuel Velikovsky.

[20][21] As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

[2] Named after him are: Before the anti-communist phrase "Better Dead Than Red" became popular during McCarthyism in the 1950s, Shapley said in a 1947 speech entitled "Peace or Pieces" that "A slave world is not worth preserving.