Word: center
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...wooded hill separates the northernmost reach of the College's campus--Currier House--from Cambridge's Fresh Pond neighborhood. On that hill, at the fringe of both academia and the real world, sits the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, housing over 300 astrophysicists--the largest group in the country...
Although the Center grew out of two older observatories, few there spend much time looking through telescopes. Most work at desks in their own offices, surrounded by references, handbooks, or computer printouts. At first inspection, the center seems like the headquarters of some old-boy-dominated corporation. The smell of pipe smoke wafts down many halls. Most of the women in the building work as secretaries or receptionists for male scientist-administrators. They keep the files in order and the coffee warm while the scientist-administrators talk on the phone and move purposefully between offices, checking on the progress...
...becomes apparent that the organization is no profit-making enterprise. George B. Field, director of the Center, says instead that the work is "a manifestation of that inquisitive, aesthetic, adventurous side of the human spirit." Below Field's office a grey-haired adventurer wanders distractedly through the Center's library, his untucked white shirt sticking out below his suit jacket. He clutches a protractor in one hand as though he has forgotten it is there, and his mind seems to be somewhere among the stars he is studying. The library where he ponders has no formal checkout desk. No librarians...
...diversity of research, as well as the Center's size, makes it unique. Field says its $15 million annual budget supports the only working body of scientists in the country that includes all the various disciplines of astronomy--from optical astronomy, to atomic and molecular physics, to theoretical astrophysics. The Center is also unique because it brings together under one roof and one name a department of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a division of a federal agency. The Faculty department is the Harvard College Observatory (HCO). The federal division is the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory...
Although HCO owns the building and the grounds and SAO pays rent, SAO is the larger of the Center's two parts. SAO's budget totals $11 million yearly, of which four million dollars comes directly from the Smithsonian Institution. HCO has an annual budget of four million dollars, including $250,000 from its own endowment...