2 - The United States Optical Observatory

Summary

Introduction

Although the Palomar Observatory had been very successful after the completion of its main instruments in the late 1940s, its existence had only exacerbated an underlying problem in the organisation of astronomy in the United States. This was because at that time the vast majority of telescopes were already owned by a limited number of prestigious universities or observatories. These had been paid for by private benefactors and their use had been generally limited to members of these institutions. As a result, astronomers at less wealthy universities had only access to instruments of more limited performance. There was no tradition of publicly funded observatories in the United States at that time, unlike that of many European countries.

The first major collaboration between two American universities in the provision of an optical observatory was instituted in 1932, when it was agreed that the new McDonald Observatory would be the joint responsibility of the universities of Texas and Chicago. Then in 1940 Otto Struve, McDonald's director, published an article ‘Cooperation in Astronomy’ in Scientific Monthly.(1) In this, he suggested setting up a collaborative observatory between a larger number of astronomical institutions. This would have provided the wider access required, although Struve was assuming, at the time, that the initial finance would be provided by a private benefactor, in this case either the Carnegie Institution or the Rockefeller Foundation. Unfortunately, this project had to be put on hold at the time because of the imminent involvement of the United States in the Second World War.

The Second World War saw a turning point in the funding of technology in general by the United States government. In both the United States and Europe large sums of money were spent on nuclear, radio and radar research, and in Germany, in particular, on the development of rockets like the V2. All of this was to have a major effect on the development of astronomy in the United States and elsewhere after the war. In the United States, in particular, it also had the effect of generating much more centralised government funding for all types of scientific research, both civil and military.