harlow shapley was born on noveber 2nd 1885 he died on october 20 1972 in boulder Colorado. He had a twin brother and grew up in a farmhouse in Nashville Missouri. In 1911 he was working with results given by Henry Russel and began finding the dimensions of stars in a number of binary systems from measurements of their light variation when they eclipse one another. These methods remained the procedure for more than 30 years. He also showed that cepheid variables can't be stars that eclipse each other. He was the first to propose that they are pulsating stars.