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From page 83... ... Bowen was director of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories for eighteen years. Here he took the leacI in developing a major organization for research and education while at the same time closely supervising details of observatory operations. Read the entire page →
From page 84... ... Bowen, received his education at the local high school and at the Geneseo State Normal. He then became a preacher in the Wesleyan Methodist Church, a small denomination with fundamentalist doctrines and strict codes of conduct. Read the entire page →
From page 85... ... stucly anct research. In a project of this sort, Bowen stucliecI the magnetic and magnetomechanical properties of samples of manganese steel supplied by Sir Robert HacIfield, with whom he eventually publishecI the results in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Read the entire page →
From page 86... ... At about this time significant improvements were introduced in the methods of ruling diffraction gratings, permitting extension of the shortward limit observable in the laboratory to about 150 angstroms. In the winter of 1920 and 1921 Bowen systematically photographed, in this newly available region, the spectra of most of the first twenty elements of the periodic table. Read the entire page →
From page 87... ... by Hale was the proximity of the emergent scientific school to the Mount Wilson Observatory of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, where the largest telescopes in the world were being used by an active staff in a variety of investigations in astrophysics and cosmology. More specifically, Hale promiser! Read the entire page →
From page 88... ... A Anderson of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Read the entire page →
From page 89... ... Millikan was exceedingly busy with the administration of the Institute anc! of the Norman Bridge Laboratory, as well as with a variety of other research efforts. Read the entire page →
From page 90... ... go BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS Bowen continued with undergraduate teaching in physics until 1929, when he took over the teaching of graduate courses in optics and spectroscopy. He became assistant professor of physics in 1926, associate professor in 192S, and professor in 193 I Read the entire page →
From page 91... ... In 1927 the text of the classic Astronomy by Russell, Dugan, and Stewart appeared, in which Russell made the suggestion that "The nebular lines may be emitted only in a gas of very low density. This wouIcl happen, for example, if it took a relatively long time for an atom to get into the right state to emit them, and if a collision with another atom in this interval prevented the completion of the process. Read the entire page →
From page 92... ... half a clozen of the strongest lines in the spectra of gaseous nebulae, but there were many other fainter lines that required years of work by Bowen anc! others; some were regular permitted lines of hydrogen ant! Read the entire page →
From page 93... ... to the 200-inch telescope project, was quickly adopted for all large telescope mirrors. Bowen accepted Wright's invitation to spend the summer term of 1938 at the Lick Observatory as a Morrison Associate. Read the entire page →
From page 94... ... Nevertheless, he continued some work on the spectra of gaseous nebulae. With the large grating spectrograph at the coucle focus of the 200-inch telescope, he made very significant improvements in the precision of the wavelengths of nebular lines, primarily because the resolution and dispersion of this instrument were far superior to those of the laboratory ancI observatory spectrographs used earlier for the ultraviolet stuclies from which the term differences were derivecI. Read the entire page →
From page 95... ... THE 200-INCH TELESCOPE PROjECT Mention has already been made of the activity in astronomy and astrophysics that was so prominent in the scientific life of Pasadena in 192 ~ when Bowen arrived from Chicago. The Carnegie Institution's 60-inch reflector had been in operation on Mount Wilson for thirteen years, the 100-inch Hooker telescope for three years. Read the entire page →
From page 96... ... The design of the 200-inch telescope was conclucted at Caltech with the close collaboration of astronomers and engineers of the Carnegie Institution's Mount Wilson Observatory over a period of several years, beginning about 1930. The project was guided by the Observatory Council and by a Policy Committee of which Bowen was a member. Read the entire page →
From page 97... ... Development, travellec3 from Washington to witness the explosion of the first nuclear bomb (the Trinity Test) in New Mexico; he continued on to the West Coast anal, in his other capacity as president of the Carnegie Institution, stopped in Pasadena to tell Bowen that Read the entire page →
From page 98... ... OBSERVATORY ADMINISTRATION For the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the California Institute of Technology, the end of the war brought urgency to the matter of reorganizing and renewing their peacetime effort in astronomy. Bowen was responsible to the two institutions, and in 1948 he was appointed director of the combined Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. Read the entire page →
From page 99... ... At many universities and research centers there wouIcI be theoreticians and interpreters eagerly demanding quantitative observational ciata; the instruments at Mount Wilson and at Palomar Mountain must be effectively usecI to help meet this neecI. Bowen himself guided the final stages of polishing and figuring the 200-inch mirror. Read the entire page →
From page 100... ... For this, the design was evolved by Bowen from the prototype developed by Adams and T Dunham, Jr., for the 100-inch Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson. Read the entire page →
From page 101... ... The region from the north pole to declination -30� couIcI be photographed from Palomar Mountain on about 900 plates. With financial assistance from the National Geographic Society, Bowen organized the Palomar Sky Survey. Read the entire page →
From page 102... ... By 1979, 322 complete sets of prints and twenty glass copies of the Survey had been distributed worldwide. The Palomar Sky Survey effectively enlarged manyfold the volume of the observed universe and formed the basis for several important catalogs and for almost countless research articles. Read the entire page →
From page 103... ... Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. The basic pattern for the proposed organization had been sketched years before by officers of Caltech anct of the Carnegie Institution, and the plan was understood when Bowen agrees! Read the entire page →
From page 104... ... One of Bowen's principal aims as director of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories was to ensure that the facilities, and especially the 200-inch telescope, would be aclministerec! and used at the highest level of efficiency ant! Read the entire page →
From page 105... ... not only large instruments but also the good observing conditions that prevailed on parts of the West Coast. The guest investigator program of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, which Bowen cleveloped and administered with great care, gave substantial opportunities to many, but it fell short of meeting the general needs. Read the entire page →
From page 106... ... Irenee du Pont telescope of the Carnegie Institution's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The performance of this last instrument is especially noteworthy, for it yields at the Cassegrain focus a field of critically good definition, 2.1 degrees in cliameter, with seeing-limited images over the whole of a single glass plate 50 centimeters on a sicle. Read the entire page →
From page 107... ... . He further improved spectrographs by devising several ingenious adaptations of the Schmidt camera, using solid or semisolid camera optics. Read the entire page →
From page 108... ... 108 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS colleagues and students and associates, anti their living regard and attachment for him and for his wife Mary."* THE AUTHOR HAS HAD the benefit of biographical notes provided by the National Academy of Sciences, of a transcript of interviews from the American Institute of Physics, and of articles written by L Read the entire page →
From page 109... ... , Princeton University, 1953 PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS Morrison Research Associate, Lick Observatory, 193~ 1939 Director, Mount Wilson Observatory, 1946-1948 Director, Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, 194~1964 National Astronomical Observatory Advisory Panel, 1953-1957 PROFESSIONAL AND HONORARY SOCIETIES National Academy of Sciences, 1936 American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1939 American Philosophical Society, 1940 Royal Astronomical Society, London (Associate) , 1946-1973 Astronomical Society of the Pacific, President, 1948 AWARDS 109 Draper Medal, National Academy of Sciences, 1942 Potts Medal, Franklin Institute, 1946 Rumford Premium, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1949 Ives Medal, Optical Society of America, 1952 Catherine Wolf Bruce Gold Medal, Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 1957 Distinguished Service Staff Member, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1964- 1973 Henry Norris Russell Lecturer, American Astronomical Society, 1964 Gold Medalist and George Darwin Lecturer, Royal Astronomical Society, 1966 Read the entire page →
From page 110... ... The series spectra of two-valence-electron and of three-valence-electron systems. Nature, 115:423. Read the entire page →
From page 111... ... Series spectra of the two-valence-electron atoms of boron (B II) and carbon (C III) Read the entire page →
From page 112... ... Pac., 39:295-97. 1928 The origin of the nebular lines and the structure of the planetary nebulae. Read the entire page →
From page 113... ... Rev., 46:791-92. 1935 The spectrum and composition of the gaseous nebulae. Read the entire page →
From page 114... ... Wyse. New lines in the spectra of the gaseous nebulae. Read the entire page →
From page 115... ... Pac., 61:61-62. Survey of the year's work at the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. Read the entire page →
From page 116... ... J., 121:30~11. Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories (Reports of Observatories 1954-55) Read the entire page →
From page 117... ... I., 61: 336-41. 1957 Instrumentation at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories. Read the entire page →
From page 118... ... Spectrophotometric studies of gaseous nebulae. Read the entire page →
From page 119... ... 8-9; 98-101. Tucson: Kitt Peak National Observatory and Univ. Read the entire page →

From page 83...

... Bowen was director of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories for eighteen years. Here he took the leacI in developing a major organization for research and education while at the same time closely supervising details of observatory operations.