Ellen Dorrit Hoffleit, 1907-2007, American astronomer. B.A. in mathematics (1928) and a Ph.D. in astronomy (1938) from Radcliffe College; D.Sc. from Smith College (1984) and from Central Connecticut State University (1998). Research assistant at Harvard College Observatory from 1929; astronomer at Harvard from 1948. In 1943, she joined the Ballistic Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Grounds to compute missile trajectories. She left Harvard in 1956 to run Yale University's star cataloging program. She authored the Bright Star Catalogue, containing information on the 9,110 brightest stars and co-authored the General Catalogue of Trigonometric Stellar Parallaxes, containing precise distance measurements to 8,112 stars. She retired from Yale in 1975. She was also director of the Maria Mitchell Observatory, Nantucket, from 1957-1978.