Word: struve
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Last week Otto Struve had a triumphant day. On a sugarloaf-shaped mountain in southwestern Texas, Astronomer Struve. already director of the University of Chicago's famed Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, took on an additional job: he officially accepted the directorship of the University of Texas' new McDonald Observatory, which houses the second largest operating telescope in the world. Its mirror is 82 inches across, just under seven feet...
...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...
Director Otto Struve of Yerkes would not say for sure that Wolf 424 is the sun's nearest known neighbor. It may be a double star, in which case the combined light of the two components would make it appear closer than it actually is. Parallax measurements requiring a year or more will be necessary to settle the contest between Proxima Centauri and Wolf...