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IN MEMORIAM
HARLAN J. SMITH
Harlan J. Smith died on October 17,
1991, of complications related to cancer, two weeks after reluctantly
postponing a trip to Hawaii. The optimistic enthusiasm and determination
which characterized his entire life did not desert him at the end.
Harlan Smith was born in Wheeling, West
Virginia, on August 25, 1924, and lived for the first 18 years of his
life in the same house on Wheeling Island–the only inhabited island
on the Ohio River. "It was the only flat land for fifty miles around,"
Harlan recalled, "and when it's not in flood it is a lovely place to
live." His father was in the building supply business, which was not
good during the Depression, but Harlan retained no sense of privation:
"There was no significant money for toys, but there was the public library
with an infinite number of books to read, and things to do. I had a
very peaceful childhood right through the middle of the Depression."
Harlan attended Wheeling public schools,
enhancing the moderate intellectual challenges presented by playing
a game of doing everything as perfectly as possible. He did this to
such good effect that he won the prize for highest grades right through
high school. His older brother Kenneth was determined to become a chemist
(and did so), and Harlan was always convinced that he too would be some
kind of scientist. Astronomy was singled out by the Buck Rogers radio
serial, by the Boy Scout astronomy merit badge, and by using a six inch
reflector which had been built by a local Catholic priest and donated
to the city.
He never had any doubt that he was going
to college–both of his parents had gone to Ohio Wesleyan–and
he prepared to follow them on graduation from Wheeling High School in
1942. That summer, Harlan unexpectedly found himself on a larger stage–he
had been selected as one of 40 national finalists in the first Westinghouse
National Science Talent Search. This entailed a trip to Washington for
further competition, in which he emerged as the national runner-up.
More important than the flood of scholarship offers that this achievement
produced was the fact that one of the three judges was the astronomer
Harlow Shapley, who was then at the height of his fame. Harlan got to
know Shapley pretty well, and this was to have a decisive influence
on his future.
Following a semester at Ohio Wesleyan,
Harlan joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in February of 1943. He was assigned
to meteorology, and was sent to Denison University in Ohio for a concentrated
one-year course in math and physics, followed by a three-month course
at Harvard in electronics. While at Harvard in the spring of 1944 he
renewed his acquaintance with Shapley, discussed a career in astronomy,
and planned to attend Harvard after the war. For the next two years,
Harlan served at various bases in the United States, and completed his
war service with a stint as a weather observer on Guadalcanal.
Harlan entered Harvard in the summer
of 1946, and after completing his first year took a job with Fred Whipple,
who planned to set up a field station for the Harvard Meteor Project
in the clear skies of the Southwest. Harlan and another Harvard undergraduate
and army friend, Richard E. McCrosky, took on substantial responsibilities,
choosing the New Mexico site of the field station from inspection of
weather records and then setting it up. Smith, McCrosky, and other Harvard
students were also involved in operating this successful project, and
the enthusiasm of that group has echoed down through the years–and
has been repeated in the many other projects in which Smith was involved.
Completing his BA in 1949, slightly
delayed by the year in New Mexico, Harlan entered Harvard graduate school
in astronomy. He proposed to do optical observing, which in Massachusetts
was a challenge, and devoted considerable effort to refurbishing the
24 and 61 inch reflectors at Harvard's Agassiz station, near Cambridge.
His interest in variable stars had been sparked by Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin,
and for a dissertation he decided ". . . to see if I could make sense
of the short-period end of variable stars. I chose that for another
reason, too–because one clear night would give me several cycles
of variation. And I might not have another clear night for two months
. . . ."
It turned out to be an interesting piece
of work–he discovered that the short-period variables were more
like Cepheids than like RR Lyrae stars, with which they had previously
been associated. He showed that they formed a distinct new group, which
he designated the "dwarf Cepheids," but which today are more frequently
referred to as delta Scuti stars.
During Harlan's first year in graduate
school he met Joan Swift Greene, a Radcliffe student and a good friend
of the Shapley's. They were married 18 months later, in December 1950.
Joan was the daughter of the medical missionary Dr. Theodore Greene,
and had been born and raised in China. Harlan developed an interest
in China which was to be with him all his life. A strong advocate of
astronomical development in China, he visited there several times, and
Chinese astronomers and students have been an increasing presence in
Austin.
While writing his dissertation and with
the encouragement of Harlow Shapley, Harlan applied for a newly-vacant
job on the faculty of Yale University. He moved with Joan and their
infant son Nat to New Haven in the fall of 1953, where he was to remain
for ten years. He was instructor, 1953-57, assistant professor, 1957-60,
and associate professor, 1960-63, but this academic progression gives
the merest hint of the enormous personal and professional expansion
that was in progress.
The Yale astronomy department in 1953
was small–Dirk Brouwer, who was chairman and director of Yale Observatory,
Rupert Wildt, and Smith were the regular faculty, and there were a few
research associates. Harlan, as the junior faculty member, taught most
of the undergraduate courses and carried out such observing as was possible
for the old observatory site not far from the center of New Haven.
Against this background of regular duties,
Harlan found time to finish his dissertation (he received his Harvard
PhD in 1955), to write and produce two educational film strips which
received national first-place awards at the New York Film Festival in
1959 and 1961, to move the Yale telescopes from their old location to
a new observatory location fifteen miles north of town, and to build
(with the assistance of graduate students James N. Douglas and Kenelm
W. Philip) a new program in planetary radio astronomy. He became active
in national astronomical affairs as the coeditor of the Astronomical
Journal (1958-63) and as the acting secretary of the American Astronomical
Society (1961-62). He knew every astronomer of the day, and was interested
in all of their work.
Three research contributions from this
time at Yale may be singled out. The first was his recognition and discussion
of the class of dwarf Cepheids–the subject of his Harvard dissertation.
Although the observations were made while still at Harvard, the data
analysis, interpretation, and writing all occurred during his first
two years at Yale.
His second special research contribution
arose from the program in planetary radio astronomy. Hoping to use the
dispersion of millisecond decameter pulses from Jupiter as probes of
the interplanetary electron density, Harlan and his students set up
multi-frequency receivers (to measure dispersion), plus spaced receivers
at four sites in Connecticut connected by telephone lines (to permit
rejection of ionospherically-induced fluctuations). No dispersion in
the Jupiter fluctuations was observed, but clear evidence of a rapidly
drifting diffraction pattern emerged from the spaced receivers. Harlan
suggested in a paper read to the AAS in 1962 that the fluctuations were
produced by interplanetary diffraction–two years before Hewish
and collaborators at Cambridge published a more famous paper announcing
a similar result for the fluctuations in intensity of discrete radio
sources.
Harlan Smith's most important research
contribution was the discovery of the optical variability and, thus,
small size of quasi-stellar objects. The first stellar-like object with
a strange spectrum to draw attention was 3C48. "Anything as weird as
that I figured ought to vary optically, and the question is, does it?"
Harlan recalled. Harlan and Dorrit Hoffleit were teaching a small graduate
class in observational astronomy techniques at the time, so they took
the whole class with them for a search of the Harvard plate stacks.
They found 60 or 80 images, but no convincing evidence of variation.
It was a very different story with 3C273, found some time later. This
was a brighter object, with many more images, going all the way back
to 1886, for which they found absolutely unambiguous evidence of optical
variation. By this time, its spectrum had been interpreted in terms
of a large redshift, suggesting a luminosity greater than that of entire
galaxies, while Smith and Hoffleit's results suggested a physical size
more comparable with the solar system. Their result was announced at
the April 1963 meeting of the AAS, and published in Nature two
months later: the ultra-small size of these ultra-luminous objects was
established.
Harlan moved to The University of Texas
at Austin in the fall of 1963 as the first "Texas" director of McDonald
Observatory and chairman of the small astronomy department. The University
of Texas owned the Observatory, but it had been developed and operated
by the University of Chicago for its first 30 years. On expiration of
the agreement with Chicago, Texas decided to retain control and accepted
an ambitious expansion plan outlined by Smith as a condition for his
acceptance of the post. Key elements of the plan included expansion
of faculty, the upgrading of existing facilities, a new telescope, a
radio astronomy program, and eventual expansion into space astronomy.
The times were right: astronomy was
in the early stages of rapid scientific and technological development;
funding from the federal government and the state was on the increase;
there was a national commitment to excellence in science from the relatively
recent Sputnik shock; and there was a determination in the state of
Texas to make the University a first-rate internationally ranked institution.
And Harlan Smith, whose dreams and enthusiasm were boundless, directed
a phenomenal expansion of astronomy at Texas over the next 26 years.
When Smith arrived in 1963, he found
a department with four faculty and four support staff in Austin, with
a half dozen more on the mountain, and a few graduate students. Today
there are 19 faculty plus many research astronomers, making a total
of about 45 PhD scientists on the department and Observatory staff,
with a combined support staff of about 125 people; 42 graduate students
are now in residence.
The program has grown large, but also
strong: Texas researchers in the past decade have been awarded the Herschel
Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Gill Medal of the Astronomical
Society of Southern Africa, and from the American Astronomical Society,
the Russell Lectureship, the Heineman Prize, the Warner Prize, the Pierce
Prize (twice), and the Cannon Award. The faculty includes one member
of the National Academy of Science, and several current or past holders
of Sloan Fellowships or Presidential Young Investigator awards. Research
is carried out in virtually every area of modern astronomy, and Harlan's
plan for expansion into space astronomy has been carried out–eight
staff members are involved with the Hubble Space Telescope, and Harlan
himself served on the early committees that defined its mission.
During his time as director, Harlan
led a rejuvenation and expansion in observatory facilities. The 82 inch
was modernized; a large meter-wave interferometer was installed near
McDonald, and a 5 meter millimeter dish was moved to the mountain; NASA,
NSF, and the University shared the cost of installing a 2.7 meter telescope
at McDonald, which was the third largest in the world when dedicated
in 1969. This telescope was appropriately named the Harlan J. Smith
Telescope in 1995. A dormitory for visiting astronomers and fifteen
new staff residences were added to the mountain, and conversion from
the photographic to the electronic and computer age was carried out.
For seven years beginning in 1978 Harlan
devoted much of his effort to the design and financial nurturing of
plans to build a 7.6 meter telescope at McDonald. Harlan's greatest
professional disappointment was the termination of the project with
the collapse of the Texas economy in 1985. But Harlan liked to point
out that it served a role in stimulating the competition, and some of
the design philosophy has survived–notably in the Japanese Subaru
Telescope, which was modeled on the Texas design. And he immediately
turned his attention to another large project: a collaboration with
Pennsylvania State University to build a large (8.5 meter) special purpose
telescope at McDonald–the Spectroscopic Survey Telescope–a
project which was successfully completed under Frank N. Bash, Harlan’s
successor as director of McDonald Observatory. This telescope, named
the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, has restored McDonald Observatory to the
first rank of observing institutions.
Throughout his career, Harlan Smith
regarded communication of astronomy to the public as one of the most
important, and most rewarding, jobs the astronomer has. Himself a gifted
teacher, he saw to it that good teaching was expected of all. The University
of Texas consequently has one of the largest programs of undergraduate
instruction in the country. He encouraged programs of outreach to the
general public: the StarDate magazine distributes 100,000 copies
annually, and the award-winning radio program StarDate is heard
by ten million people per week all over the world. Visitors are welcomed,
not merely tolerated, at McDonald Observatory; the visitor's center
now serves 120,000 people per year–who must go there on purpose,
since McDonald is not on the road to anywhere! And Harlan always insisted
that the largest telescope on the mountain be open for public viewing
one evening per month–the only place in the world where a 107 inch
telescope is accessible in that way.
Harlan Smith's profound impact on astronomy
at Texas was matched by his work on behalf of the larger astronomical
community. He served on numerous committees and panels, among which
were: National Academy of Sciences ad hoc Committee on the Large
Space Telescope (which eventually became the Hubble Space Telescope),
1966-70; chairman of the Planetary Division of the AAS, 1974-75; council
member of the AAS, 1975-78; vice president of the AAS, 1977-79; member
of the Space Science Board of the National Research Council and chair
of its Committee on Space Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1977-80; member
of the board of directors of AURA, 1972-83 (chairman of the board, 1980-83);
and chairman of the Management/Operations Working Group for Planetary
Astronomy (NASA), 1988-91.
Harlan Smith received honorary doctorates
from Nicolaus Copernicus University (1973) and from Denison University
(1983). He was named the Edward Randall, Jr., MD, Centennial Professor
of Astronomy at The University of Texas in 1984, and received the Distinguished
Public Service Medal from NASA in 1991.
Harlan retired from the directorship
of McDonald Observatory in 1989, and focused his energies on teaching
and on space–two threads that ran throughout his life. His courses
always edified and often inspired cumulative thousands of undergraduates,
and he served as supervisor of 17 PhD students and mentor to hundreds.
James Douglas was his first PhD student (1961), and during Harlan's
last summer Scott R. Sawyer completed his degree (1991).
Harlan's interest in space appeared
in Douglas's first association with him in 1953–Douglas was an
undergraduate in his first Yale astronomy course. During a lecture on
orbits, he took a sidetrack into the technical problems involved in
going to the moon, stated they were all soluble, and predicted a landing
in ten years; that is, by 1963. His time estimate was optimistic (which
was characterisic of Harlan), but he was perfectly right (which was
also characteristic), and that at a time when very few people were taking
the subject seriously. His interest in space continued and broadened;
his last collaborative work with Douglas involved the design of a lunar
farside radio telescope, which was for Harlan a sideline in his larger
work of drumming up scientific and public support for a return to the
moon.
His bubbling spirit of optimism pervaded
everything. He set high goals for himself and threw himself into things
wholeheartedly. He saw the best in everyone, and assumed that they too
would do their best. It wasn't that he was blind to the difficulties
of projects and to the darker sides of people–it was just that
his policy and his nature were to take the positive road. He had successes
and he had disappointments, but his spirit was never quenched.
Harlan is survived by his wife Joan
Greene Smith; his children Nathaniel, Julie, Theodore, and Hannah; three
grandchildren; and his brother Kenneth.
<signed>
Larry R. Faulkner,
President
The University of Texas at Austin
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors James N. Douglas (chair), Frank N. Bash, and William
D. Cochran.
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