Marjorie Hall Harrison was born in Nottingham, England. In 1947, she authored one of the first scientific books, a dissertation while at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, with the word "model" in the title. This work describes the processes that fuel stars and is among the first works that endeavored to create detailed mathematical models for complex physical systems. Along with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, George Gamow and G. Keller, Harrison published models in 1944, 1946 and 1947 discussing stars modeled with hydrogen-depleted and isothermal cores. As a doctoral student of S. Chandrasekhar at the University of Chicago, she received a degree in astronomy in 1947. A brother, Sir Arnold Alexander Hall, was noted for the design of gyroscopic gun-sights for D-day fighter aircraft, the compressor for Frank Whittle's first jet engine and the 1954 investigation of the various crashes involving the de Havilland Comet 1. Another brother, Cecil Hall, was one of Eli Franklin Burton's graduate students who build the first practical electron microscope at the University of Toronto in 1938. 

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