Report on the progress in stellar evolution to 1950 (Q1574474)

To 1860 the time scale for Earth history was 6000 years; William Thomson's ignorance set it at 100 million years, and Charles Darwin's ideas required some billions of years. Ernest Rutherford's atomic theory and the generation of energy it provided (with conservation energy also involved) provided a solution. With stellar structure unknown, Norman Lockyer's temperature arch gave the idea of hot and cool stars under gravitation contraction; others classified stars into early- or late-type. Henry Norris Russell outlined a main-sequence of evolution via spectral-class and luminosity, from giant reds to dwarf reds (dwarf whites were an unfortunate and omitted complication). Stratton wrote in 1923 that there appeared to be two sequences, one based on nebulosity, one on contraction. Between 1917 and 1925 Arthur Eddington wrote on the internal constitution of stars based on classical mechanics: stellar material was assumed to be a perfect gas, of uniform composition, of constant opacity (a factor of 10 higher than in usual theory!), with a constant rate of generation of energy per unit mass, under radiation transfer and radiation pressure; the resulting differential equations were integrated with zero pressure at the stellar surface. The material of the stars was assumed to be uniform also in the sense that they were composed of the same elements and abundances (a preponderance of iron) as the Earth. 1930 saw quantum mechanics start to replace the flawed opacity assumption, iron uniformity replaced by relative abundances, especially that of hydrogen, helium and oxygen; Cecilia Payne [-Gaspochin]'s most brilliant Ph.D. thesis of the temperature of the stars led the way, even though she was talked out of hydrogen abundance by Henry Russell in 1925; he relented and changed his mind in 1929, and the question was settled by Eddington and Bengt Strömgren in 1932. Then followed the work of Robert d'Escort Atkinson, Fritz G. Houtermans, C.F. von Weizsäcker, George Gamow, Hans Bethe, Chandrasekhar, Merle Tuve, Edward Teller; nuclear reactions, the formation of elements from deuterium to nitrogen, the existence and stability of nuclear kernels, the carbon-nitrogen sequence, the understanding of the formation of red giants. The problem of the dwarfs, red and white, mass and colour, was left to the 1950s for Hoyle and others. The article is readable, rich in detail and pertinent quotations, and comprehensible. There are 36 references.