Personal Life, Family Relations and Late Years
Struve had a younger brother and two sisters, all of whom died in Russia in their youth: Werner (1903–1920), Yadviga (1901–1924) and Elizabeth (1911–1920). The last death in 1924 left his mother with no close relatives in Russia. After Struve arranged visa documents, she immigrated to the US in January 1925. Remarkably, his mother began working in astronomy in the US and assisted in processing of the measurements. She lived with Struve even after his marriage.
On May 25, 1925, Struve married Mary Martha Lanning, who considered herself a musician but worked as a secretary at Yerkes. Lanning was slightly older than Struve and had been previously married. They had no children; thus the famous Struve astronomical dynasty came to an end. Other branches of the Struve family besides the line of Otto Wilhelm von Struve continued, but yielded no distinguished scientists. On October 26, 1927, Struve became a naturalized US citizen. At that time, he was fluent in spoken and written English, but had a slight German accent which remained with him for life. Even after marriage, Struve continued working days and nights, something that his non-scientist wife could not fully accept. Although they remained together, their relations were cold in later years. Struve's health deteriorated in the late 1950s. He was suffering from hepatitis, first contracted back in Russia and Turkey. In 1956, while using a telescope at Mount Wilson, Struve had a bad fall, breaking several ribs and cracking two vertebrae. He was hospitalized for about two months and had to wear a body cast for a month after recovery. He was permanently hospitalized around 1963 and died on April 6, 1963 in Berkeley. He was survived by his mother and wife. His mother died on October 1, 1964, at the age of ninety. Mary was discovered dead on August 5, 1966, but was estimated to have died in July 1966.
In 1925, Struve met his cousin, the astronomer Georg Hermann Struve at the Lick Observatory. In 1930s, they met again at Yerkes Observatory and reanalyzed observations of the complex multiple star system Zeta Cancri by their grandfather Otto Wilhelm von Struve.
Read more about this topic: Otto Struve
Famous quotes containing the words late years, personal, family, relations, late and/or years:
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Like many another romance, the romance of the family turns sour when the money runs out. If we really cared about families, we would not let “born again” patriarchs send up moral abstractions as a smokescreen for the scandal of American family economics.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“In the mythic schema of all relations between men and women, man proposes, and woman is disposed of.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“While nature thus very early and very abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper methodization of our diet.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“In two or three hundred years life on earth will be unimaginably beautiful, astounding. Man needs such a life and if it hasn’t yet appeared, he should begin to anticipate it, wait for it, dream about it, prepare for it. To achieve this, he has to see and know more than did his grandfather and father.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)