The legacy of George Ellery Hale Book

The Mount Wilson Observatory, with its 100-inch telescope, and the Mount Palomar Observatory, with its 200-inch instrument, are monuments to the scientific leadership of George Ellery Hale (1868–1938). So central were his efforts and influence in the founding, funding, and building of these great facilities that they were jointly renamed the Hale Observatories in 1970.

But, as this book documents, these and other astronomical instruments are only the most visible and tangible part of Hale's legacy. More pervasive if less obvious were his efforts and influence in shaping the organization and institutions of science, its governance and financing. Perhaps as much as any one man, he brought science into the modern age of large-scale projects and team research. Directly and indirectly, numerous scientific societies, journals, research institutions, and universities bear the stamp of his felt presence, among them the National Academy of Sciences, the International Council of Scientific Unions, the International Astronomical Union, The Astrophysical Journal, the Carnegie Institution, and the California Institute of Technology.

This book is organized into three sections, reflecting respectively Hale's life, his own scientific interests as revealed in a selection from his papers, and his impact on his times and beyond as witnessed by colleagues and legatees at the Hale Centennial Symposium, sponsored in 1968 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In the first part Helen Wright, who has published a full-length biography of Hale, deftly sketches out his life with the aid of numerous photographs, letters, newspaper accounts, and other documents.

The second part presents five of Hale's written contributions, selected to point up the range of his concerns. The first is a thesis he submitted as an M.I.T. undergraduate, in which he describes his invention, the spectroheliograph. Another, given before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, reports his major discovery, the existence of magnetic fields in sunspots. The others are "Astronomical Telescopes since 1890," "Elements in Technical Education," "National Academies and the Progress of Research," and "The Possibilities of Large Telescopes," the last from a 1928 issue of Harper's Magazine.

The final part of the book offers perspectives from the present which indicate that Hale's legacy has been wisely used by his heirs. The contributions to the Hale Centennial Symposium that are presented here are "Astronomical Telescopes since 1890," by C. Donald Shane; "Astronomical Instrumentation in the Twentieth Century," by Ira S. Bowen; "Research on Solar Magnetic Fields from Hale to the Present," by Robert Howard; and "George Ellery Hale and Modern Scientific Institutions," by Daniel J. Kevles.

Nearly 150 fascinating photographs—both astronomical and human in scale—add to the pleasures of this volume.