Book Description

This volume contains the papers and discussions at IAU Colloquium No. 21 on Variable Stars in Globular Clusters and in Related Systems held in Toronto on the 29th, 30th and 31st August 1972. It was the intention of the organizers that this meeting should honour the life long work in this field of Professor Helen Sawyer Hogg. She has been continuously active in observational research on variables in globular clusters for 46 years and her catalogues and bibliographies as well as her research papers, review articles and IA U reports as chairman of the committee on variable stars in clusters are of fundamental importance to all workers in this field. The scope of the colloquium covered both observational and theoretical aspects of the problem, including the relationship of variables to non-variable cluster members, the position of the variables in the HR diagram and their importance for problems of stellar evolution, empirical data on the variables, periods and period changes, and the relevant parts of pulsation theory. The meeting was particularly successful in bringing together observers and theorists. It will have achieved its object if it has shown both observers and theorists which are the problems most suitable for attack at the present time. The meeting clearly demonstrated the great importance of research on variables in globular clusters and related systems for our understanding both of stellar evolution and stellar pulsation.