American astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Seyfert (1911-1960) is credited with the discovery of a whole class of galaxies that bear his name, the Seyfert galaxies. these spiral-shaped galaxies are characterized by an exceptionally bright nucleus. Seyfert's general area of astronomical expertise was determining the spectra, as well as brightness and color, of stars and galaxies. After working for four years at the Chicago, Illinois, branch of the McDonald Observatory, Seyfert went in 1940 to work as a National Research Fellow at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, California. It was there in 1943 that he discovered Seyfert galaxies. From 1946 to 1951 he served as the director of Barnard Observatory at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. In 1952, he was made a professor of astronomy at the university, where he remained until his death in an automobile accident in 1960.
