A. Grace Cook


Alice Grace Cook, known as Grace Cook or A. Grace Cook was a British astronomer. She joined the British Astronomical Association in 1911, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1916, part of the first group of women elected as fellows. She was renowned for her work observing meteors, and also observed naked-eye phenomena including the zodiacal light and aurorae. During World War One Cook, with Fiammetta Wilson, headed the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section. Cook observed comets and Milky Way novae and was among the discoverers of V603 Aquilae, a nova that occurred in 1918. This work earned her the Edward C. Pickering Fellowship from the Maria Mitchell Association in 1920–1921. From 1921 to 1923 Cook was sole director of the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section. With Joseph Alfred Hardcastle, Cook worked to identify and describe 785 New General Catalogue objects on a series of photographic plates taken by John Franklin-Adams.
Cook lived in Stowmarket, Suffolk. She died in 1958 and was remembered by her colleagues as a skilled and dedicated astronomer.