Broca's Brain (42 page)

A board of visitors was appointed to resolve some (never publicly specified) problems at the U.S. Naval Observatory. A report of this group—which consisted of two obscure senators and Professors Edward C. Pickering, George C. Comstock and Hale—is illuminating because it mentions dollar amounts. We find that the annual running costs of the major observatories in the world were: Naval Observatory, $85,000; Paris Observatory, $53,000; Greenwich Observatory (England), $49,000; Harvard Observatory, $46,000; and Pulkowa Observatory (Russia), $36,000. The salaries of the two directors of the U.S. Naval Observatory were $4,000 each, and at the Harvard Observatory, $5,000. The distinguished board of visitors recommended that in a “schedule of salaries which could be expected to attract astronomers of the class desired,” the salary of directors of observatories should be $6,000. At the Naval Observatory, computers (exclusively human at the time) were paid $1,200 per annum, but at the Harvard Observatory only $500 per annum, and were almost exclusively women. In fact, all salaries at Harvard, except for the director’s, were significantly lower than at the Naval Observatory. The committee stated: “The great difference in salaries at Washington and Cambridge, especially for the officers of lower grade, is probably unavoidable. This is partly due to Civil Service Rules.” An additional sign of astronomical impecuniosity is the announcement of the post of “volunteer research assistant” at Yerkes, which had no associated
pay but which was said to provide good experience for students with higher degrees.

Then, as now, astronomy was besieged by “paradoxers,” proponents of fringe or crackpot ideas. One proposed a telescope with ninety-one lenses in series as an alternative to a telescope with a smaller number of lenses of larger aperture. The British in this period were similarly plagued but in perhaps a gentler way. For example, an obituary in the
Monthly Notices
of the Royal Astronomical Society (59:226) of Henry Perigal informs us that the deceased had celebrated his ninety-fourth birthday by becoming a member of the Royal Institution, but was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1850. However, “our publications contain nothing from his pen.” The obituary describes “the remarkable way in which the charm of Mr. Perigal’s personality won him a place which might have seemed impossible of attainment for a man of his views; for there is no masking the fact that he was a paradoxer pure and simple, his main conviction being that the Moon did not rotate, and his main astronomical aim in life being to convince others, and especially young men not hardened in the opposite belief, of their grave error. To this end he made diagrams, constructed models, and wrote poems; bearing with heroic cheerfulness the continued disappointment of finding none of them of any avail. He has, however, done excellent work apart from this unfortunate misunderstanding.”

The number of American astronomers in this period was very small. The by-laws of the Astronomical and Astrophysical Society of America state that a quorum is constituted by twenty members. By the year 1900 only nine doctorates had been granted in astronomy in America. In that year there were four astronomical doctorates: two from Columbia University for G. N. Bauer and Carolyn Furness; one from the University of Chicago for Forest Ray Moulton; and one from Princeton University for Henry Norris Russell.

Some idea of what was considered important scientific work in this period can be garnered from the prizes that were awarded. E. E. Barnard received the Gold
Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in part for his discovery of the Jovian moon Jupiter 5 and for his astronomical photography with a portrait lens. His steamer, however, was caught in an Atlantic storm, and he did not arrive in time for the celebration ceremony. He is described as requiring several days to recover from the storm, whereupon the RAS hospitably gave a second dinner for him. Barnard’s lecture seems to have been spectacular and made full use of that recently improved audio-visual aid, the lantern slide projector.

In his discussion of his photograph of the region of the Milky Way near Theta Ophiuchus he concluded that “the entire groundwork of the Milky Way … has a substratum of nebulous matter.” (Meanwhile H. K. Palmer reported no nebulosity in photographs of the globular cluster M13.) Barnard, who was a superb visual observer, expressed considerable doubts about Percival Lowell’s view of an inhabited and canal-infested Mars. In his thanks to Barnard for his lecture, the president of the Royal Astronomical Society, Sir Robert Ball, voiced concern that henceforth he “should regard the canals in Mars with some suspicion, nay, even the seas [of Mars, the dark areas] had partly fallen under a ban. Perhaps the lecturer’s recent experiences on the Atlantic might explain something of this mistrust.” Lowell’s views were not then in favor in England, as another notice in Observatory indicated. In response to an inquiry on which books had most pleased and interested him in 1896, Professor Norman Lockyer replied, “Mars by Percival Lowell, Sentimental Tommy by J. M. Barrie. (No Time for Reading Seriously).”

Prizes in astronomy for 1898 awarded by the Académie Française included one to Seth Chandler for the discovery of the variation in latitude; one to Belopolsky, partly for studies of spectroscopic binary stars; and one to Schott for work on terrestrial magnetism. There was also a prize competition for the best treatise on “the theory of perturbations of Hyperion,” a moon of Saturn. We are informed that “the only essay presented was that by Dr. G. W. Hill of Washington to whom the prize was awarded.”

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Bruce Medal was awarded in 1899 to Dr. Arthur Auwers of Berlin. The dedicatory address included the following remarks: “Today Auwers stands at the head of German astronomy. In him is seen the highest type of investigator in our time, one perhaps better developed in Germany than in any other country. The work of men of this type is marked by minute and careful research, untiring industry in the accumulation of facts, caution in propounding new theories or explanations, and, above all, the absence of effort to gain recognition by being the first to make a discovery.” In 1899 the Henry Draper Gold Medal of the National Academy of Sciences was presented for the first time in seven years. The recipient was Keeler. In 1898 Brooks, whose observatory was in Geneva, New York, announced the discovery of his twenty-first comet—which Brooks described as “achieving his majority.” Shortly thereafter he received the Lalande Prize of the Académie Française for his record in discovering comets.

In 1897, in connection with an exhibition in Brussels, the Belgian government offered prizes for the solutions of certain problems in astronomy. These problems included the numerical value ofred prizes for the solutions of certain problems in astronomy. These problems included the numerical value of the acceleration due to gravity on Earth, the secular acceleration of the Moon, the net motion of the solar system through space, the variation of latitude, the photography of planetary surfaces, and the nature of the canals of Mars. A final topic was the invention of a method to observe the solar corona in the absence of an eclipse.
Monthly Notices
(20:145) commented: “… if this pecuniary reward does induce anyone to solve this last problem or in fact any of the others, we think the money will be well spent.”

However, reading the scientific papers of this time, one gets the impression that the focus had shifted to other topics than those for which prizes were-being given. Sir William and Lady Huggins performed laboratory experiments which showed that at low pressures the emission spectrum of calcium exhibited only the so-called H and K lines. They concluded that the Sun was
composed chiefly of hydrogen, helium, “coronium” and calcium. Huggins had earlier established a stellar spectral sequence, which he believed was evolutionary. The Darwinian influence in science was very strong in this period, and among American astronomers T. J. J. See’s work was notably dominated by a Darwinian perspective. It is interesting to compare Huggins’ spectral sequence with the present Morgan-Keenan spectral types:

HUGGINS’
STELLAR SPECTRAL SEQUENCE

Note:
The modern stellar spectral sequence runs, from “early” to “late” spectral types, as O, B, A, F, G, K, M. Huggins was very nearly right.

We can see here the origin of the present terms “early” and “late” spectral type, which reflect the Darwinian spirit of late Victorian science. It is also clear that there is a reasonably continuous gradation of spectral types here, and the beginnings—through the later Hertzsprung-Russell diagram—of modern theories of stellar evolution.

There were major developments in physics during this period and readers of
Ap. J.
were alerted to them by the reprinting of summaries of important papers. Experiments were still being performed on the basic radiation laws. In some papers, the level of physical sophistication was not of the highest caliber, as, for example, in an article in
PASP
(11:18) where the linear momentum of Mars is calculated as the single product of
the mass of the planet and the linear velocity of the surface. It concluded “the planet, exclusive of the cap, has a momentum of 183 and 3/8 septillion foot pounds.” Exponential notation for large numbers was evidently not in wide use.

In this time we have the publication of visual and photographic light curves, for example, of stars in M5; and experiments in filter photography of Orion by Keeler. An obviously exciting topic was time-variable astronomy, which must then have generated something of the excitement that pulsars, quasars and X-ray sources do today. There were many studies of variable velocities in the line of sight from which were derived the orbits of spectroscopic binaries, as well as periodic variations in the apparent velocity of Omicron Ceti from the Doppler displacement of H gamma and other spectral lines.

The first infrared measurements of stars were performed at the Yerkes Observatory by Ernest F. Nichols. The study concludes: “We do not receive from Arcturus more heat than would reach us from a candle at a distance of 5 or 6 miles.” No further calculations are given. The first experimental observations of the infrared opacity of carbon dioxide and water vapor were performed in this period by Rubens and Aschkinass, who essentially discovered the
v
₂
fundamental of carbon dioxide at 15 microns and the pure rotation spectrum of water.

There is preliminary photographic spectroscopy of the Andromeda nebula by Julius Scheiner at Potsdam, Germany, who concludes correctly that “the previous suspicion that the spiral nebulae are star clusters is now raised to a certainty.” As an example of the level of personal vituperation tolerated at this time, the following is an extract from a paper by Scheiner in which W. W. Campbell is criticized: “In the November number of the
Astrophysical Journal
, Professor Campbell attacks, with much indignation, some remarks of mine criticizing his discoveries … Such sensitiveness is somewhat surprising on the part of one who is himself given to severely taking others to task. Further, an astronomer
who frequently observes phenomena which others cannot see, and fails to see those which others can, must be prepared to have his opinions contested. If, as Professor Campbell complains, I have only supported my views by a single example, I was only withheld by courteous motives from adding another. Namely, the fact that Professor Campbell cannot perceive the lines of aqueous vapor in the spectrum of Mars which were seen by Huggins and Vogel in the first place, and, after Mr. Campbell had called their existence in question, were again seen and identified with certainty by Professor Wilsing and myself.” The amount of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere that is now known to exist would have been entirely indetectable by the spectroscopic methods then in use.

Spectroscopy was a dominant element in late-nineteenth-century science.
Ap. J.
was busily publishing Rowland’s solar spectrum, which ran to 20,000 wavelengths, each to seven significant figures. It published a major obituary of Bunsen. Occasionally the astronomers took note of the extraordinary nature of their discoveries: “It is simply amazing that the feeble twinkling light of a star can be made to produce such an autographic record of substance and condition of the inconceivably distant luminary.” A major topic of debate for the
Astrophysical Journal
was whether spectra should be shown with red to the left or to the right. Those who favored red to the left cited the analogy of the piano (where high frequencies are to the right), but
Ap. J.
opted gamely for red to the right. Some room for compromise was available on whether, in lists of wavelengths, red should be at the top or at the bottom. Feelings ran high, and Huggins wrote to say that “any change … would be little less than intolerable.” But the
Ap. J.
won anyway.

Another major discussion in this period was on the nature of sunspots. G. Johnstone Stoney proposed that they were caused by a layer of condensed clouds in the photosphere of the Sun. But Wilson and FitzGerald objected to this on the ground that no conceivable condensates could exist at these high temperatures, with
the possible exception of carbon. They suggested instead and very vaguely that sunspots are due to “reflection by convection streams of gas.” Evershed had a more ingenious idea. He thought that sunspots were holes in the outer photosphere of the Sun, permitting us to see to much greater and hotter depths. But why are they dark? He proposed that all the radiation would be moved from the visible to the inaccessible ultraviolet. This, of course, was before the Planck distribution of radiation from a hot object was understood. It was not at this time thought impossible that the spectral distributions of black bodies of different temperatures should cross; and some experimental curves of this period indeed showed such crossing—due, as we now know, to emissivity and absorptivity differences.