John L. Hershey

John L Hershey was an American astronomer who worked at the Sproul Observatory during 1960s and 1970s. Hershey worked alongside Peter van de Kamp, cataloguing thousands of stars.^[1] Before coming to Swarthmore, Hershey was interim director of the M.T. Brackbill Planetarium in the Suter Science Center at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg Virginia from 1958-1960. In 1966 he earned his Master's in Astronomy from the University of Virginia. He completed his doctorate at University of Virginia in 1969.^[2]

His doctoral thesis was model atmospheres and strong-line profiles for late-type dwarfs. This prepared him for the work with van de Kamp at Sproul. A 1975 paper describes a greatly enhanced method for processing thousands of telescopic plates taken at the observatory.^[3]