98 



NATURE 



[March 24, 1910 



taken down to Pasadena, but many were burnt. The 

 building and contents were insured, but re-building- 

 cannot be commenced until after the close of the 

 rainy season in the spring, so that the observers will 

 be put to some inconvenience during the next few 

 months, though there are now so many residences on 

 the mountain that they can find temporary quarters. 



In Pasadena, 6000 feet below, are the instrument 

 shop, office, physical laboratory, &c. Here also dwell 

 the wives and families of the observers. There is, o' 

 course, communication constantly by telephone and 

 frequently by personal visit between the two depart- 

 ments of the observatory. Much practice has made 

 the observers expert and rapid climbers. 



Prof. G. E. Hale at the 3o-foot spec' rograph of the 60- foot tower telescope, arranged for photo- 

 graphing the spectrum of a sun-spot with rhomb and Nical prism. 



Our thoughts naturally turn from the contemplation 

 of so magnificent an installation to the man who 

 designed it, and has brought it to such perfection 

 of efficiency in the short space of six years. It is, 

 of course, not the first achievement of Prof. Hale. 

 Just six years ago it fell to the lot of the present 

 writer to review his work on the occasion of the 

 award to him of the gold medal of the Royal Astro- 

 nomical Society. That work already comprised the 

 successful inception of the spectroheliograph and its 

 use in depicting the " flocculi " at various " levels " 



able piece of work on the spectra of fourth-type stars ; 

 also the foundation and equipment, not only of the 

 private observatory at Kenwood (Chicago), but of 

 the great Yerkes Observatory, with its giant tele- 

 scope and other magnificent resources for the study of 

 astrophysics; also the establishment of the Astro- 

 physical Journal as an indispensable aid to workers. 

 Such a record might well have cont^ented an ambitious 

 man at the end of a long life, but it is not too much 

 to say that Hale has in the intervening six years 

 eclipsed these achievements, together and separately, 

 by new ones. The workers who had been put in com- 

 munication by his Journal have been drawn into 

 closer companionship by the International Union for 

 Solar Research, which he inaugu- 

 rated at St. Louis in 1904, and 

 which he. has Invited, after meet- 

 ings at Oxford (1905) and Meudon 

 (1907), to meet at Mount Wilson this 

 year, as above stated. His record 

 of work now includes the photo- 

 graphic mapping of the sun-spot 

 spectrum (a long-standing problem 

 solved) and the discovery of mag- 

 netic vortices in the sun — a truly 

 sensational discovery, and one 

 which is certain to lead to others; 

 and his work in founding the 

 Yerkes Observatory has been 

 treated as preliminary to the real 

 business of adapting the splendid 

 Mount Wilson Observatory, point by 

 point, to the pressing needs of solar 

 physics. 



We should lose a valuable lessors 

 if we did not note the steady pro- 

 gression in enterprise which has 

 built up the success. Prof. Hale 

 has several times publicly Insisted 

 upon the value of work with modest 

 apparatus, such as he began with 

 himself. During a visit to Eng- 

 land in 1907, he gave an address to 

 the Royal Astronomical Society on 

 " Some Opportunities for Astro- 

 nomical Work with Inexpensive 

 Apparatus " (Mon. Not. R.A.S., 

 Ixviii., p. 64), which not only em- 

 phasised the value of such work, 

 but gave a number of concrete sug- 

 gestions to intending workers. 

 The difficulties of making a begin- 

 ning are well known ; but those 

 who earnestly consult this lecture 

 will find most of them removed. It 

 Is, of course, assumed that there is 

 a desire to work ; Hale addressed 

 himself to " the amateur," defining 

 him as " the man who works irr 

 astronomy because he cannot help 

 it, because he would rather do such 

 work than anything else in the world, and who there- 

 fore cares little for hampering traditions or for diffi- 

 culties of any kind." These noble words are not only 

 a stimulus ; they also clearly reflect the character of the 

 man who uttered them, and go far towards explain- 

 ing his success. For the rest, we may accept his 

 own estimate of the importance of beginning with 

 small means, and of the value (several times empha- 

 sised In letters to the present writer) of the encourage- 

 inent of his father. His father bought him a 

 telescope (an excellent 4-inch Clark), but not until he 

 had first made one himself ; his father also bought 



in the solar atmosphere (the connotations of the terms 



iii inverted commas having been suggested by the j him the spectroscope with which he first photographed 

 medallist only a few weeks before) ; also a consider- | a spectrum, to his huge delight, but this was not 

 NO. 2108, VOL. 83] I 



