Word: struve
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Otto Struve has seen more of life than most stargazers. Scion of a distinguished line of European astronomers, he was born in Kharkov, Russia, where his ancestors had settled after emigrating from Germany. He studied astronomy at Kharkov's university, served in the Russian Army in the World War, fought on the Turkish front. He fought with the White Russians against the Bolsheviks, fled to Constantinople after the White Russian collapse. While hiding in a coal bunker he found a wad of Imperial Russian banknotes which would have made him rich a few years before but were then worthless...
After that his troubles were over. When blind Astronomer Edwin Brant Frost retired in 1932, Struve succeeded him as Yerkes' director. His valuable and multifarious work there includes discovery of the biggest star known to man-an almost transparent body four billion miles across which like a monstrous ghost accompanies the well-known star Epsilon Aurigae (TIME...
Yerkes has the world's biggest refractor (a telescope equipped with a lens instead of a mirror) but it is only 40 inches in diameter. For years Struve has pined for a big reflector. One day he walked into the office of University of Chicago's President Robert Maynard Hutchins, told him that the University of Texas had received a bequest of $800,000 for an astronomical observatory. The money had been left by William J. McDonald, a Texas farmer who acquired an interest in science during his youth, an interest he never lost though he became...
...Struve suggested that if the University of Texas provided the observatory and the University of Chicago a staff to run it, they might accomplish more in such a cooperative enterprise than either could separately. Forthright Bob Hutchins forthwith picked up his telephone, called U. of T.'s president, got a favorable answer, and soon the project was under...
...than any other in the U. S.-all the sky except that relatively small part which lies within 30° of the south celestial pole. But it will not probe so far into space or catch such faint stars as Mt. Wilson's 100-incher; and Dr. Struve, candidly admitting these limitations last week, said that it would be used for those wide-vision purposes to which it is especially well adapted...