Word: giacconi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Riccardo Giacconi, professor of Astronomy and specialist in x-ray astronomy, is member of the ten-man panel George B. Field, director of the CFA, said yesterday...
...White House spokesman refused yesterday to confirm that Giacconi and Ruina were on the committee. Giacconi said this week that John Marcum, senior advisor to the president for technology and arms control, told him not to discuss the matter...
...Giacconi recalled last week, the problem entailed getting enough X-ray particles to fall on a detector and create an image, like light (in the form of "photons") hitting film in a camera. Giacconi saw that by positioning mirrors at shallow angles to the incoming radiation, astronomers could collect X-rays over a large area and funnel them onto a small detector, allowing for photographs "a millionfold" more detailed than previously possible...
...theory was there; but technology still needed time to catch up. "We realized that the technology would take many years to develop, but it was a great boost knowing that we ultimately knew a way to make X-ray astronomy very sensitive," Giacconi remembers. Before HEAO-2 could become a reality, though, X-ray astronomy would have to make sporadic progress. In 1962, a group headed by Giacconi discovered the first X-ray star; eight years later the same personnel were responsible for the first orbiting X-ray observatory (named "UHURU" after the Bantu word for freedom...
Although the $85 million dollar NASA-funded project has been directed by a consortium of four groups--CRA, MIT's Center for Space Research, Columbia University and the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland--the main impetus for the mission has come from 60 Garden St. Giacconi is the overall director of the Einstein Observatory, while scientific responsibility rests with Harvey Tannenbaum, an associate of the Harvard College Observatory...