The British Astronomical Association (BAA) was established in 1890 by a circle of amateur observers who found the discourse at the Royal Astronomical Society too technical and the membership fees too high. The BAA organized itself into sections by interest and instrumental means, and offered members practical instruction in the art of observing. And unlike its professional counterpart, the new organization was open to women. (Margaret Huggins was among the original board members.)
The early twentieth century saw the formation of regional amateur astronomy clubs worldwide. Harvard’s Edward Pickering collaborated with noted observer and author William Tyler Olcott in 1911 to establish the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), a still-active group devoted to long-term monitoring of stellar light fluctuations. In Pickering’s ever-practical view, an army of amateur astronomers under the supervision of professionals might render valuable (and low-cost) service in certain areas of cosmical studies. Women especially should be recruited, he advised in an 1882 guide to variable star observation:
Many ladies are interested in astronomy and own telescopes, but with two or three noteworthy exceptions their contributions to the science have been almost nothing. Many of them have the time and inclination for such work, and especially among the graduates of women’s colleges are many who have had abundant training to make excellent observers. As the work may be done at home, even from an open window, provided the room has the temperature of the outer air, there seems to be no reason why they should not thus make an advantageous use of their skill. . . . The criticism is often made by opponents of the higher education of women that, while they are capable of following others as far as men can, they originate almost nothing, so that human knowledge is not advanced by their work. This reproach would be well answered could we point to a long series of such observations as are detailed below, made by women observers.
Among the AAVSO’s charter members were Helen Swartz, a mathematics teacher in Norwalk, Connecticut; Vassar astronomy instructor Helen Furness; and Mount Holyoke’s Anne Sewall Young, who logged more than sixty-five hundred observations over three decades. The AAVSO amply carried out its mandate, yet most amateurs—women included—preferred to view the sky for their own enjoyment, and largely ceded the business of research to their institutional brethren.
The emergence of astrophysics during the 1890s was at once a revolution in scientific practice and in the social structure of its community of devotees. The exigencies of forefront science came to overwhelm the majority of self-taught amateurs who had helped usher in the field. The successors of these wealthy gentleman-scientists, constrained by resources and training, could do little more than regard with interest the colossus of scientific research accelerating past them. By the turn of the century, astrophysical observation and analysis had become a full-time job, typically requiring institutional support, a team of workers, and increasingly, a remote mountaintop telescope. With amateur astronomers relegated to the history but no longer the future of astrophysical research, professionals had to sort out what it meant to be an astronomer in the twentieth century.
Chapter 22
THE UNION OF TWO ASTRONOMIES
The domains of the physical sciences are not, like the political divisions represented on a map, capable of being defined by boundary lines traced with mathematical precision. They pass into one another by imperceptible gradations, the unity of nature opposing itself to rigid systems of classification. . . . Such is the nature of the science . . . known as astrophysics.
—James Keeler, address delivered at the dedication of the Yerkes Observatory, October 21, 1897
BY THE 1890S, THE NEW ASTRONOMY was no longer new. The term astrophysics, or its hyphenated variant astro-physics, had become part of the astronomical lexicon. Initially, this meant the application of photography or spectroscopy to garner data about the intrinsic properties of celestial objects. Only during the early twentieth century, when physical theory achieved a sufficient degree of sophistication, would this branch of study swell into an all-encompassing science. Indeed, astrophysics would come to overshadow the traditional study of celestial positions and motions, not the least for its flexibility of application. Astrometry was a diamond, hardened by a century of experience, its procedural facets shaped by precise strikes along fixed planes. Astrophysics was gold, malleable to the purpose, its form ever evolving under the imaginative guidance of observer and theorist.
Astrophysicists harbored an expansionist outlook toward the exploration of the universe, a recognition that the scientific frontier lay beyond the circumscribed realm of traditional astrometry. At the dedication of the University of Chicago’s Yerkes Observatory in 1897, astrophysicist James Keeler acknowledged that “there may be some who view with disfavor the array of chemical, physical, and electrical appliances crowded around the modern telescope, and who look back to the observatory of the past as to a classic temple whose severe beauty had not yet been marred by modern trappings.”
Keeler’s remarks convey the dislocation felt by many veteran observers, who had long served as stewards of cosmic science. Their unease over the future of the field was captured by Agnes Clerke, doyenne of the history of astronomy during this tumultuous period. Clerke was a walking-talking fount of astronomical news, from whom top researchers learned what their colleagues—and their competitors—were up to. “The majestic elder astronomy,” she writes in an 1888 article, “might, it was to be feared, suffer neglect through the predominant attractions of its younger, more versatile, and brilliant competitor; or its lofty standard of perfection might become lowered through the influence of workers more zealous than precise, recruited from every imaginable quarter, inventive, enthusiastic, indefatigable, but unused to the rigid requirements of mathematical accuracy.”
Typical of Clerke’s zealous workers was radial-velocity expert W. W. Campbell, who conveys the allure of astrophysics in an 1894 letter to Keeler: “I regret having to give some time to the old work, & want to get out of it entirely. In spectroscopy one can cut loose from traditions and roam as free as he likes. . . . There is so much waiting to be done, & the nights are few and short.”
Campbell was far from alone in longing to free himself from the bonds of traditional observation. The coming decades would bring a sea change in the career aspirations of rising astronomers. Allegheny Observatory’s Frank Schlesinger, a pioneer in the photographic measurement of stellar positions and parallaxes, lamented in the 1920s that “the superior attractiveness of astrophysical work has nearly monopolized the services of our most promising young men.”
The bifurcation of professional astronomy between the old and the new was cemented in the United States with the launch of the Astrophysical Journal in 1895. The magazine billed itself as an international review of spectroscopy and astronomical physics. Astrophysicists who had formerly published their results in observatory annals, the American Journal of Science, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, or Germany’s Astronomische Nachrichten, now had an outlet devoted to their particular mode of research. (The venerable Astronomical Journal, founded by Benjamin Gould in 1849, specialized in mathematical and astrometric papers.)
At the same time, astronomers at Harvard, Lick, and other major American institutions realized that they had equaled, if not surpassed, their European brethren in the breadth and vitality of their research. Buoyed by the nation’s growing contributions to the global enterprise, Simon Newcomb and University of Chicago astrophysicist George Ellery Hale sought to establish a national professional organization. American astronomy at the time was institution-centric, and the effort to unify within a professional body was viewed with some suspicion. But Hale’s organizational genius and Newcomb’s prestige together convinced the dispersed community of researchers that a national forum for the exchange of ideas was merited.
The Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America held its first meeting in 1899 at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, with some fifty of
its 113 charter members in attendance. Despite its aspirational name, the new society was far from a national body: Only 62 percent of United States professional astronomers joined, and over one-third of these worked at Harvard, Lick, the University of Chicago, and federal agencies. Many astronomers eyed the yearly meetings in distant cities as a needless impingement upon their time and their independence. However, under the energetic presidency of Edward Pickering, membership rose steadily. By 1910, 80 percent of American astronomers had joined, and forty-two institutions were represented.
In a fifty-year retrospective, University of Wisconsin researcher Joel Stebbins highlighted the critical social role of the new organization: “Astronomers must have been a group of lonely individuals in the [1880s and 1890s] when they had little opportunity to get together. Those doing research were pretty far apart with few personal contacts.” In time, solo astronomers gravitated to the society’s periodic forums and the opportunity to interact with colleagues. The gatherings hatched research collaborations and more than occasionally dampened professional animosities. Stebbins recalled a case of two individuals “who were at sword’s points before they came to a meeting; but it was arranged for them to sit next to each other at the dinner; and at the end it was gratifying to see them shaking hands and saying how glad they were to have had the opportunity to talk things over.”
Another issue that sparked dissension was membership eligibility: Should the society impose a restrictive standard of academic credentials and advanced research training or open up its ranks to amateur observers and armchair aficionados? The society’s bylaws allowed the nomination of “any person deemed capable of preparing an acceptable paper upon some subject of astronomy, astrophysics, or related branch of physics,” to which one applicant—a lawyer—inquired, acceptable to whom? Might he himself, the lawyer posed, submit a paper acceptable to his janitor on how to start a fire? (The society agreed that, in this case, the applicant’s letter was sufficient proof of eligibility.) Others suggested wryly that “a good-sized check on a bank might be considered an acceptable paper on astronomy.”
Unsurprisingly, traditional astronomers vied with astrophysicists for supremacy within the fledgling organization. Cofounder Hale even proposed that the presidency of the society alternate between the two factions to ensure that neither gained the upper hand. (The suggestion was never enacted.) In 1914, recognizing that astrophysics had become an inseparable part of the entire astronomical enterprise, the membership settled on coequal status and renamed themselves the American Astronomical Society. Once distinct, next intermingled, the terms astronomy and astrophysics were henceforth synonymous.
The initial perception of astrophysics as a “soft” science faded as its technical underpinnings grew more complex. Nor could old-school astronomers dismiss the scientific fruits of its investigations. Agnes Clerke foresaw the eventual acceptance of astrophysics as a full-fledged science, as well as its positive influence on its astrometric stablemate. “The new astronomy,” she writes, “has submitted to bear the yoke of the old. The old astronomy has adopted the new methods, and is even now anxiously fitting them to its own sublime purposes. It has enlarged its boundaries without departing one iota from its principles. By an effort that shows it to be still young and elastic, it has seized the key of the situation, and now stands hopeful and dominant before the world. This union of the two astronomies has long been in remote preparation. . . . Circumstances concurred to bring it about just at the right moment.”
Not every celestial observer aspires to be the next Galileo or Herschel. To secure one’s reputation by revealing new worlds is a fetching vision that tends to dim with experience. For many nineteenth-century astronomers, the lure of discovery was set aside for the quiet, sustained pursuit of more workmanlike goals: mapping the night sky, classifying stellar spectra, counting sunspots, gauging double-star separations, refining the mechanics of the telescope. In this regard, amateur astronomer William Huggins and his professional counterpart Edward Pickering were in sync. Both relished the intricate, snail’s-pace tasks attendant to the acquisition of astronomical knowledge. Pickering defined the peculiar joy of the night-sky observer in his journal in March 1900: “Although the work is the most acute and absolutely monotonous, I find it very fascinating, and always watch the next morning for the progress made in the completion of the work.” Huggins expressed the astronomer’s ethic with a veteran’s shrug-shouldered succinctness: “Life is work, and work is life.”
As alike as their scientific proclivities might have been, Huggins and Pickering diverged in their manner of execution. The contrast derived only partly from choice; in significant measure, it was imposed upon each of them by political and cultural differences in their respective scientific communities. Through the 1890s, while its European competitors lagged, the United States experienced an unprecedented rise in astronomical research capacity. And most of this expansion stemmed from an increasing academic and institutional focus on astrophysics.
The growth of astrophysical observation in America paralleled that of universities and colleges featuring specialized departments of study. As centers of higher education proliferated, so too the number of small- and moderate-aperture telescopes fitted for visual, photographic, or spectroscopic research. By the turn of the century, a campus observatory had become almost as common a fixture as an instructional chemistry laboratory, a stunning reversal of their paucity at midcentury. American universities were free to pursue virtually any avenue of research for which funding might be secured from individuals or foundations. Unlike tangled government bureaucracies, university presidents might fast-track an astrophysical initiative that promised to confer prestige upon their institution.
Factory-style research programs, such as those at Harvard and Lick Observatories, stimulated growth in the population of astronomers. The academically trained astronomer—effectively, the factory boss—directed specialized, low-wage employees in their various mundane tasks. One team might handle nighttime photography and chemical processing, the other daytime measurement and initial analysis. Adept workers might be assigned their own projects, altogether a multipronged research effort that multiplied the capacity of a single scientist. Freed of such time-consuming duties, the lead astronomer completed the analysis, drew conclusions, and presented the results—as his own—to the world. This assembly-line model emulated that of the Royal Greenwich Observatory’s astrometric program, only applied to astrophysical observation.
Where the 1840s had been a virtual desert for astronomical research in the United States, the latter half-century saw widespread blooming of the landscape. By 1886, professional astronomers in America far outnumbered their European colleagues: 128 versus eighty-one in Germany, seventy in Great Britain, and sixty-three in France. The United States likewise led Germany, Great Britain, and France in the count of research observatories: forty, twenty-six, thirty-two, and sixteen, respectively. Fully three-quarters of American observatories at the time were based at universities and colleges, versus only 34 percent in Germany, 25 percent in Great Britain, and zero in France. (Almost all French observatories were government-run.) By the early twentieth century, the number of American astronomers and observatories had each more than doubled from their 1886 levels. As today, the road to advancement for these academics lay not in undergraduate teaching but in the tangible scholarly products they themselves had been taught to generate: original research, publications, and advanced-degree graduates trained to conduct independent scientific investigation.
Astronomy had long held a place in the minds of the nineteenth-century American public. “Of the sciences in America,” writes contemporary historian John Lankford, “astronomy has the deepest cultural roots. . . . Public support for astronomy in the pre-Civil War era rested on its spiritual and cultural value, not on any material contributions astronomers might make to American life. Apparently Americans valued astronomy as a way of achieving cultural transcendence.”
Cosmic exploration wa
s the frequent subject of newspaper articles and popular-level books. Although science did stimulate the brain, reporters also latched onto the intellectual blood-sport of institutional politics and rivalries, such as Edward Holden’s troubled tenure at Lick Observatory. Amateur astronomy societies played a significant role in promoting astronomy on a local and regional basis, through lectures and hands-on instruction in celestial observing. Monthlies like the Sidereal Messenger and its successor, Popular Astronomy, delivered the latest astronomical developments to the masses.
Driving the engine of astrophysical research in the United States during the late nineteenth century was the availability of money. Entrepreneurial astronomers solicited the wealthy, promising to burnish their social standing, as well as their legacy, through association with the cause of science. In Harvard’s spectral classification program, spectroscopic pioneer William Huggins rightly perceived an institutional juggernaut elbowing him aside. To his potential donors, Edward Pickering offered an almost irresistible blend of self-confidence, graciousness, and persistence. Anna Draper gave $235,000 to Harvard during her lifetime and bequeathed another $150,000 upon her death. In 1878, Boston construction baron Uriah Atherton Boyden declined a request to pitch in $500 to the observatory’s fundraiser, only to have the trustees of his estate bestow $230,000 in his name after his death. Catherine Wolfe Bruce, daughter of a real-estate investor, answered Pickering’s call for $50,000 to place a photographic telescope in Peru.
Starlight Detectives Page 29