Yerkes Observatory, 1892-1950: The Birth, Near Death, and Resurrection of a Scientific Research Institution

398 Pages·1997·35.293 MB·English

by  Donald E. Osterbrock

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Y E R K E S OBSERVATORY, 1 8 9 2 - 1 9 5 0
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Yerkes 1892 1950
Observatory,
THE BIRTH,N EAR DEATH, AND RESURRECTION
OF A SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH INSTITUTION
Donald E. Osterbrock
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS / CHICAGO AND LONDON
Donald E. Osterbrock is professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. He is editor or coeditor of six books and
author of four, most recently Eye on the Sky: Lick Observatory’s First Centuvy
(with John R. Gustafson and W. J. Shiloh Unruh), and Pauper and Prince:
Ritchey, Hale, and Big American Telescopes.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
0 1997 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 1997
Printed in the United States of America
06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 0-226-63945-2 (cloth)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Osterbrock, Donald E.
Yerkes Observatory, 1892-1950 : the birth, near death, and
resurrection of a scientific research institution / Donald E.
Osterbrock. .
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-226-63945-2 (cloth : alk. paper).
1. Yerkes Observatory-History. I. Title.
QB82.U62W556 1997
522’.19775’89-d~20 96-25450
CIP
@The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the
American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 239.48-1984.
C O N T E N T S
Preface v11
Birth, 1868-1897 1
Infancy, 1897-1904 25
Near Death, 1904-1932 47
The Savior, 1897-1931 77
The Boy President, 1929-1932 107
The Boy Director, 1932-1936 133
Resurrection on the Campus and
at Yerkes, 1893-1937 159
8 Birth of McDonald Observatory, 1933-1939 187
9 An Extraordinarily Fine Group, 1936- 1942 21 1
10 World War 11, 1939-1945 245
11 Golden Years, 1945- 1950 267
12 Epilogue: To the Centennial, 1950-1997 303
Abbreviations Used in Notes and Bibliography 325
Notes 329
Bibliography 363
Index 367
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PREFACE
Y erkes Observatory celebrates its centennial in 1997. When it
was dedicated and went into operation in 1897, it was Amer-
ica’s second big-science establishment, built around a large,
expensive scientific instrument, the forty-inch refracting telescope-
“the largest and best . . . in the world,” in the words of its donor,
Charles T. Yerkes. Like Lick Observatory’s thirty-six-inch refractor a
decade earlier, or a huge particle accelerator, an Antarctic research
base, or the Hubble Space Telescope of today, it was intended to be
used by a group of top-flight scientists, working more or less inde-
pendently, to unravel the secrets of the universe we live in-“who we
are, where we came from, where we are going”-on the cosmic scale.
Surely Yerkes Observatory deserves its first book-length history,
and the time is ripe to write it. As the first professional observatory in
America planned from the start to be devoted to astrophysics (the
study of the physical nature of the stars, nebulae, galaxies, and plan-
ets), it is particularly relevant today. To bring its history down to the
present, however, would be very difficult. A certain distance and per-
spective are necessary to see what is important, what should be em-
phasized, and what were the most meaningful discoveries. Rather
than attempting to cover a hundred years of its history, I decided it
would be preferable to confine this book to the time of the first three
directors: George Ellery Hale, who built Yerkes Observatory, Edwin B.
Frost, who let it decay, and Otto Struve, who revived it. And of
course it did not miraculously spring into existence on October 21,
1897, the day James E. Keeler gave his invited address “The Impor-
tance of Astrophysical Research, and the Relation of Astrophysics
to Other Physical Sciences” and Yerkes handed over the keys to the
...
Vlll PREFACE
observatory to William Rainey Harper, first president of the Univer-
sity of Chicago. The story begins even before the founding of “Harper’s
University” (actually John D. Rockefeller’s) in 1891, with Hale’s first
observatory, Kenwood, and the steps that led up to it. The period of
this book ends with Struve’s resignation and departure for California
in 1950, but a brief epilogue completes his story and the stories of
some of the most important staff members and ideas of his time.
I should make my background and prejudices clear at the start. I
am an unabashed admirer of Yerkes Observatory and the University
of Chicago; I was an undergraduate and graduate student there and
am the fortunate holder of five Chicago degrees. Many of the scien-
tists of the latter Struve years were my teachers, and though Frost
died when I was only ten years old, I met his widow, Mary H. Frost,
and lunched with her and with their daughter, Katherine B. Frost, on
several occasions when they came to Williams Bay and visited their
friends who had made their home into the boardinghouse where I lived
for three years. My teachers included, among others, Enrico Fermi,
Gregor Wentzel, and Thornton L. Page in Chicago and Struve, Sub-
rahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Gerard P. Kuiper, William W. Morgan,
and Bengt Stromgren at Yerkes. I admired them all and learned much
from them.
Some readers may find a few of my judgments harsh, however, and
think me overly critical. I do not mean to be, but I believe it would be
false to present a rosy picture in which every decision was the right
one, all motives were pure, and all great scientists were also perfect
human beings. I cannot write like that; I believe an author’s duty is to
write the truth as he or she sees it, and I think readers will accept no
less. When you read my criticisms of these great figures of the past,
remember that as a research scientist and an observatory director I
have walked in their footsteps, although at by far a lower standard of
achievement than theirs. I can see myself all too clearly in some of
their less noble actions, taken, they believed, from the highest of mo-
tives, for their observatory, their university, and their science. Henrik
Ibsen’s words, “To write-that is to hold judgment over one’s self,”
very definitely apply to this book.
Many persons helped me in preparing and writing this history of
Yerkes Observatory. Most of all I thank Helen Wright, who more
than two decades ago, and many times afterward, encouraged me to
go on with my efforts on the history of American astronomy in the
big-telescope era. Her book Explorer of the Universe contains an ex-
cellent short history of the early days of Yerkes Observatory, and if