- Person
- H. A. Rey
- Lived
- 1898–1977
- Field
- Children's books, illustration, astronomy for beginners
- From
- German-American
The story
Hans Augusto Rey, born Reyersbach to a Jewish family in Hamburg in 1898, is best known as the illustrator of Curious George. His other great gift to the public began in the First World War. Drafted into the German army in 1916, he spent the dark nights at the front studying the stars with a pocket guidebook, and he found the traditional drawings frustrating.
The old star charts drew elaborate mythological figures, a lion, twins, a hunter, over the stars, but the figures rarely matched the stars themselves. The lines that joined the stars made shapes that had nothing to do with the names. For a beginner trying to find Leo or Gemini on a real night, the pictures were almost no help.
Decades later, after he and his wife Margret had escaped Nazi-occupied France by bicycle and settled in the United States, Rey set out to fix this. He redrew the constellations so that the connecting lines formed recognizable pictures. In his version, the stars of Leo make the outline of a lion and Gemini looks like two figures holding hands. The shapes are easy to remember, so once seen in the book they can be found again in the sky.
He published the system in The Stars: A New Way to See Them in 1952, his only book for adults, and followed it in 1954 with Find the Constellations, a simpler version for children. Both amateur and professional astronomers praised the approach, and his constellation figures were adopted in other guides, including Donald Menzel's Field Guide to the Stars and Planets.
Both of Rey's books are still in print. A new edition of Find the Constellations was released in 2008, updated with modern measurements and with Pluto's new status as a dwarf planet. Generations of families, scout groups, teachers and backyard stargazers have learned the night sky through the shapes he drew.
Why it matters
Rey's constellation shapes, still in print and copied in other guides, help beginners and children everywhere find and remember the stars.
About H. A. Rey
Hamburg-born illustrator who fled Paris by bicycle in 1940 with the manuscript of Curious George, and later redrew the constellations so anyone could find them.
Sources
- Guide to the H. A. Rey Papers University of Oregon, Archives West
- H. A. Rey Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.