The Day We Found the Universe (49 page)

151 “I am sure that we could be just as good friends if we did go at each other ‘hammer and tongs’”: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, February 26, 1920.

151 “‘take the lid off’ and definitely attach each other's viewpoint”: Ibid.

151 “I have neither time nor data nor very good arguments”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, March 31, 1920.

152 “two talks on the same subject”: HP, Shapley to Hale, February 19, 1920.

152 “My sympathies are with the audience”: HUA, Shapley to Abbot, March 12, 1920.

152 “We could scarcely get warmed up in 35 minutes”: HP, Curtis to Hale, March 9, 1920.

152 compromised at forty minutes: HUA, Abbot to Shapley, March 18, 1920.

152 “If you or he wish to answer points made by the other”: HUA, Shapley Papers, Hale to Curtis, March 3, 1920.

152 For Curtis it was $2 for the stagecoach to San Jose, then another $100 for the round-trip railroad ticket: LOA, Curtis Papers, Curtis to Campbell, April 8, 1920.

152 When the train broke down … to collect a few native ants: AIP, interview of Harlow Shapley by Charles Weiner and Helen Wright on August 8, 1966.

152 “growth and development” … in weather forecasting: NAS, Program of Scientific Sessions, Annual Meeting, April 26, 27, 28, 1920.

153 “Dr. Harlow Shapley, of the Mount Wilson solar observatory”: “Scientists Gather for 1920 Conclave” (1920), p. 38.

153 two friends of Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell … were in the audience to size him up: Bok (1978), p. 250.

153 “just got a new theory of Eternity”: Shapley (1969), p. 78.

153 conference dinner was the following night: NAS, Academy press release, “America's Academicians Meet in Washington,” April 19, 1920.

153 Shapley did save the typescript of his talk: Subsequent Shapley lecture quotes are taken from HUA, Shapley Papers, “Debate MS.”

154 “so much greater weight” … “be used as checks or as secondary standards”: Shapley (1918d), p. 43.

154 wondering whether he should change his approach on the fly: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, June 13, 1920.

154 some of his slides, displaying his essential points, do survive: All the major points are discussed in Hoskin (1976a), pp. 178–81.

155 eleven “miserable” Cepheids: HUA, Shapley to Russell, March 31, 1920.

155 Everyone in essence went home maintaining the beliefs they held: Fernie (1995), p. 412.

156 “came out considerably in front”: Hoskin (1976a), p. 174.

156 “gift of the gab”: Ibid. There's some evidence that Shapley got wind of this gossip about his poor speaking skills. Once at Harvard, he wrote his old boss George Hale that he was planning a series of lectures. “It turns out that I have some of the knacks of entertaining a general audience (as I rather suspected would be the case if I got a little experience)—not too much dignity, you know, some enthusiasm, and an increasing confidence.” HL, Walter Adams Papers, Shapley to Hale, October 3, 1921.

156 “He has … a some what peculiar and nervous personality” … “more balance more force and a broader mental range”: HUA, G. R. Agassiz to Lowell, April 28, 1920.

156 “Yes, I guess mine was too technical”: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, June 13, 1920.

156 At first Curtis wasn't keen on publishing his comments: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, June 13, 1920.

156 “generally observed in composing telegrams” … “shoot our arrows into the air”: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, August 2, 1920.

157 “ten pages of buncombe”: HUA, Shapley to Curtis, July 27, 1920.

157 “Should I go ahead, shoot my shot (or wad)”: Ibid.

157 “at least a brief statement of how you explain them if not island universes”: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, September 8, 1920.

157 “appear fatal to such an interpretation”: Shapley and Curtis (1921), p. 192.

157 “I see no reason for thinking them stellar
or
universes”: HUA, Shapley to Russell, September 30, 1920.

157 “the island universe theory must be definitely abandoned”: Shapley and Curtis (1921), p. 214.

159 Van Maanen was the descendant of an aristocratic family … a rare find at the time: Berendzen and Shamieh (1973), p. 582, and Seares (1946).

159 “One always returns to one's first love,” he scribbled on the title page of a 1944 paper on stellar parallaxes: Sandage (2004), p. 127, and van Maanen (1944).

159 “Do not use this stereocomparator without consulting A. van Maanen”: Trimble (1995), p. 1138.

159 played a good game of tennis: AIP, interview of Nicholas U. Mayall, June 3, 1976.

160 “He could go to a dinner and soon have the whole table laughing”: Shapley (1969), p. 56.

160 An accomplished chef: Sandage (2004), p. 129.

160 “Van Maanen and I are in ill-favor because we do or try to do too much”: HUA, Shapley to G. Monk, January 28, 1918.

160 van Maanen always seemed to see this effect: Hetherington (1990b), p. 30.

160 Ritchey was then using Mount Wilson's 60-inch telescope … details never before captured: Ibid., pp. 31–33.

160 at first measured no variation but got permission from Ritchey to keep the plates to study them further: HP, van Maanen to Hale, May 2, 1916; Hale to Chamberlin, December 28, 1915.

160 he chose thirty-two stars … would be negligible: Hetherington (1990b), p. 35.

161 “If the results … could be taken at their face value”: Van Maanen (1916), pp. 219–20. John Duncan, just appointed director of the Wellesley College Observatory, in Massachusetts, took a long trip west to visit observatories in the summer of 1916. There he assisted in giving the new 100-inch mirror its first coat of silver and wrote Slipher that “van Maanen, who is a very enthusiastic Dutchman, has measured with the Blink some photographs of Messier 101 made some years apart and gets what seems to be certain evidence of a motion
along
the arms of the spiral.” LWA, Duncan to Slipher, July 14, 1916.

161 meant … the nebula's edge had to be traveling faster than the speed of light: Shapley (1919e), p. 266.

161 van Maanen followed all the precautions: Hetherington (1990b), p. 37.

161 “While the recent revival of the notion that spiral nebulae are mere distant constellations”: HP, Chamberlain to Hale, January 31, 1916.

161 “might indicate that these bodies are not as distant as is usually supposed to be the case”: Hetherington (1974b), pp. 52–53.

161 “So that we do not know yet if this is an island universe!”: HP, van Maanen to Hale, December 17, 1917.

162 “His wide experience in astrometric work”: HL, Walter Adams Papers, Adams to John C. Merriam, August 15, 1935.

162 “a much greater time interval will probably be necessary before nebular rotations can be definitely established”: Hetherington (1990b), p. 26.

162 “The mean of five measures each of which is not worth a damn”: LOA, Curtis Papers, Curtis to Campbell, July 11, 1922.

162 “entirely in agreement with some speculations in which I have recently been indulging”: Jeans (1917a), p. 60.

162 both van Maanen and Jeans began to calculate higher masses for the spirals: Smith (1982), p. 40.

164 seemed to imply his methods were valid: Hetherington (1990b), p. 42.

164 “would be so bold as to question the authenticity of the internal motions”: Smart (1924), p. 334.

164 “I finished … my measures of M51”: HUA, van Maanen to Shapley, May 23, 1921.

164 “Congratulations on the nebulous results!”: HUA, Shapley to van Maanen, June 8, 1921.

164 “I think that your nebular motions are taken seriously now”: HUA, Shapley to van Maanen, September 8, 1921.

164 “raise a strong objection to the ‘island-universe’ hypothesis”: Van Maanen (1921), p. 1.

164 “which, obviously, are extremely improbable”: Ibid., p. 5.

164 “a great number of very distant stars … crowded together [to] give the impression of nebulous objects”: Lundmark (1921), p. 324.

165 “speak for a large distance”: Ibid., p. 326.

165 Shapley began to feel sizable pressure: After Lundmark published a paper in 1922 criticizing some of Shapley's research, Shapley undiplomatically wrote Lundmark that “there will be little gain if either of us … strive to pick to pieces small and irrelevant points…. Think how many flaws or hasty conclusions you or I might find in your big paper on the distances of globular clusters.” HUA, Shapley to Lundmark, July 15, 1922. Lundmark was deeply upset by Shapley's remarks and did stop his criticism of van Maanen's work for a while, lest others start putting his own findings under a microscope. HUA, van Maanen to Shapley, October 21, 1922. Robert Smith points out that Lundmark had the opportunity to remeasure van Maanen's plates during a stay at Mount Wilson in the early 1920s and was briefly convinced that van Maanen had detected some real motions in the spirals, which made him deem the island-universe theory “rather hopeless.” But by 1924 additional study convinced Lundmark he had been wrong, returning him to the island-universe fold. See Smith (1982), p. 108.

165 “celestial speed champion” … “many millions of light years” away: Slipher (1921), p. 6.

165 “increases the probability”: Öpik (1922), p. 410.

165 “Shapley couldn't swing the thing alone” … “and I might keep Shapley from too riotous an imagination,—in print”: HP, Russell to Hale, June 13, 1920.

166 “I would rather do astronomy”: DeVorkin (2000), p. 169.

166 “Chief Observer or something of the sort”: HUA, Julian L. Coolidge to Shapley, November 24, 1920.

166 He, a bit miffed, curtly turned it down: HUA, Shapley to A. Lawrence Lowell, December 10, 1920.

166 try him out for a year as chief of staff: George Hale first made this suggestion in a letter to Harvard president Lawrence Lowell. “You might give Dr. Shapley for a year some position such as you recently offered him for a longer period,” he wrote. “This would enable you to test his scientific and personal qualifications, with the purpose of appointing him Director in the case of a favorable outcome…. I am willing to give him a leave of absence for a year if you wish to try this plan.” HP, Hale to Lowell, December 11, 1920. Complete behind-the-scenes details on Shapley's struggle to garner the Harvard appointment is found in Gingerich (1988).

166 “a kind of rotating galaxy for ideas”: Hoagland (1965), p. 429.

166 bounding up the stairs two steps at a time: Payne-Gaposchkin (1984), p. 155.

166 “He cast spells over people”: AIP, interview with Helen Sawyer Hogg by David DeVorkin on August 17, 1979.

166 band of enthusiastic workers: AIP, interview of Harry Plaskett by David DeVorkin on March 29, 978.

166 “he inspired us all”: AIP, interview of Leo Goldberg by Spencer Weart on May 16, 1978.

166 He also stubbornly ignored new scientific data at times: AIP, interview with Jesse Greenstein by Paul Wright on July 31, 1974.

166 “I thought I told you that I left Mount Wilson just to avoid this ordeal”: HL, Walter Adams Papers, Shapley to Gianetti, July 29, 1921.

166 tendered his resignation ten days before the Washington debate took place: LOA, Curtis to Campbell, April 16, 1920.

167 “the biggest mistake he ever made”: AIP, interview with C. Donald Shane by Elizabeth Calciano in 1969.

167 “the California combination of instruments PLUS climate”: Osterbrock, Gustafson, and Unruh (1988), p. 146.

167 “You play golf don't you? Well, this is my golf”: Stebbins (1950), June 24.

167 “memorable set-to” … “I have always thought that the clubs we wielded at each other….”; “watching the strife with interest”: HUA, Curtis to Shapley, July 10, 1922.

168 “photographing, photographing….” … “hunt for novae and variables”: LOA, Curtis to Aitken, January 2, 1925.

168 “I am copying that instrument in my design far more than any other”: LOA, Curtis to Aitken, March 16, 1934.

11. Adonis

169 “Adonis”: HUB, Box 7, Grace's memoirs.

169 “Had we been casting”: HUB, Box 8, Anita Loos remembrance.

169 adding dubious credentials to his curriculum vitae: This may have been a family trait. Hubble's father was described by his family as working at certain positions, which it was later discovered he never held. See Christianson (1995), p. 12.

170 And the longer time went on, said astronomer Nicholas Mayall, who once worked with Hubble, the higher the pedestal got: AIP, interview of Nicholas U. Mayall by Bert Shapiro, February 13, 1977.

170 he ruled his domestic realm with a firm puritanical hand, a strictness that was balanced by the more forgiving and accessible mother: HUB, Box 8, Helen Hubble memoir.

170 permitted to stay up past his bedtime: Ibid.

170 In high school: Facts concerning Hubble's high school accomplishments come from HUB, Box 2.