ABSTRACT

Who Got Henry Norris Russell's Office?

At the end of World War II, American astronomy was in a profound state of change. Along with most if not all of the math/science disciplines, it had been frozen in time for years with its best minds and bodies devoted to the war effort. The end of the war brought everyone home to institutions that had been shepherded and lovingly preserved by the older generation, some now far beyond retirement age and more than anxious to step down. Inastronomy, this situation came as no special surprise.

Many older astronomers had known since the 1930s that their cohort was due to retire by the end of the 1930s. Directors at Mount Wilson, Lick, Michigan and many other institutions including Princeton were keenly aware of this, but what they did not count upon was the ultimate effect of the growing war in Europe and how that would change the American landscape. The earliest inkling of major change came with the influx of first political and then war refugees in the 1930s and early '40s. European astronomers, many of senior status and highly competitive, sought refuge in America and substantially broadened what had been a largely observational science, and posed a threat to the nativists in the discipline who had not
been as concerned when only bright young scholars came to the United States in search of advanced training and excellent data. At the same time, however, graduate instruction in astronomy in America had finally matured to the point where younger domestic products were available to fill positions. This situation created considerable tension in the American
astronomical community by the end of the 1930s, a tension that was reflected in the processes observatories went through to identify andprepare the next generation of observatory directors.

It is almost inconceivable today to young astronomers just how dominant the " observatory director" system was in America in the past. Individual astronomers at observatories rarely enjoyed the freedom and autonomy they expect today working in an academic and intellectual institution. In 1930s American astronomy, however, almost everything was decided by a small
circle of observatory directors. The discipline was still centered largely on the observatory.

So, the answer to the question posed by the title of my talk "Who Got Henry Norris Russell's Office", though based largely upon the biography I wrote on Russell several years ago, will be cast in a larger light so that we might better appreciate how profoundly, and in what ways, the discipline of astronomy changed in the mid-20th Century.