March 24, 1910J 



NATURE 



99 



until he had first worked with home-made apparatus; 

 his father built the Kenwood Observatory, but not 

 until his son had matured his plans by work at Har- 

 vard and elsewhere. " His policy always was," 

 writes the son in one of his letters, " to induce me 

 to construct my first apparatus, and then to give me 

 a good instrument if my early experiments were 

 successful." On the death of this wise and kind 

 father, his children established, in pious and afTec- 

 tionate memory- of him, the "William E. Hale Fund " 

 for the encouragement of research, which has already 

 aided, in an unobtrusive but none the less efficient 

 manner, several scientific projects of different kinds. 

 His lessons are so deeply impressed on the mind of 

 his son that in the address above referred to he 

 said, "with all seriousness, that it is a fair question 

 whether large observatories, with powerful instru- 

 mental equipment, should be established, if they tend 

 to keep back the man who is pursuing the subject 

 with less expensive appliances, and is introducing, 

 through his careful consideration of the possibilities 

 of research, the new methods which in the process of 

 time will take the place of the old ones." 



A few facts and dates may be given here. George 

 EUery Hale was born in Chicago on June 29, 1868 

 (a few months before the classical observations of 

 prominences without an eclipse, on which he was to 

 build his main work), the son of William E. and 

 Mary S. Hale ; he married in i8go Miss Evelina S. 

 Conklin, of Brooklyn, N.Y., and has a daughter and 

 a son. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of 

 Technology (Boston) in 1886, taking the course in 

 pure science, and graduating S.B. in 1890. He spent 

 some time at the University of Berlin in 1893-4. 

 While in Boston he was enabled, by the kindness of 

 Prof. E. C. Pickering, to spend his spare time at the 

 Harvard Observatory, doing any work assigned to 

 liim. The principle of the spectroheliograph occurred 

 to him in the summer of 1899, but experiments were 

 not then successful. He first photographed the 

 prominences in the spring of 1891, within a week or 

 two of similar successes by C. A. Young and Des- 

 landres ; but this achievement must be carefully 

 distinguished! from the construction of the first suc- 

 cessful spectroheliograph, in which Hale had a clear 

 lead of all other workers. It was completed in 

 January, 1892, and from that time regularly recorded, 

 at the Kenwood Observatory, prominences and 

 faculae. Before the end of 1892 the project for the 

 great Yerkes Observatory was already on foot, and 

 was completed in the autumn of 1897. We may note 

 in passing two incidents of that early history ; first, 

 that the project originated in a chance conversation 

 with Alvan G. Clark at the Rochester meeting of 

 the American Association for the Advancement of 

 Science. Hale then learnt of the existence of two 

 discs of glass available for a large telescope, and 

 immediately began the search for a Maecenas. Such 

 incidental results of scientific gatherings are some- 

 times forgotten in estimating their value. Secondly, 

 after several applications had failed, when ultimately 

 the matter was laid before the late Mr. C. T. Yerkes, 

 he replied at once, inviting President Harper and 

 Mr. Hale to call upon him, and telegraphed for Mr. 

 Clark as a result of the interview. His rapidity in 

 decision seems to have been noteworthy, even in 

 Chicago. 



It would unduly extend this brief notice to follow 

 the history of the Yerkes Obser^'atory during the 

 years from its completion in 1897 until Hale handed 

 over the directorship in 1904 to Prof. E. B. Frost, 



1 It docs not seem to the present writer that the late Miss A. M. Gierke 

 has been sufficiently careful tj distinguish these two distinct steps in her 

 otherwise admirable writings (see, e.g., " Problems in Astrophysics," pp. i8 

 aid 98. 



NO. 2108, VOL. 83] 



in order to devote himself to the Mount Wilson 

 Observatory'. One is sometimes tempted to peer into 

 the future ; from Kenwood to Yerkes, from Yerkes 



to Mount Wilson, from Mount Wilson to ? Does 



a fourth term of the series ever occur to Prof. Hale 

 in his dreams? Series are treacherous to deal with; 

 " it is most unpleasant," once remarked an eminent 

 mathematician who has devoted part of his life to 

 them, " to dream that you are expanded in an infinite 

 series, and that it will not converge." There is a 

 notable divergence in the series of observatories with 

 which Prof. Hale might identify himself; but then 

 it may not be infinite. Indeed, we expect to find 

 — recurring to the attitude of anticipation with which 

 this notice began — we confidently expect to find in 

 August next excellent reasons why the series should 

 stop short at its third term. It is difficult to imagine 

 how conditions for work could be bettered. Mount 

 Wilson has great instruments and a fine climate ; 

 it has the financial backing of the wealthy Carnegie 

 Institution ; it is within easy reach of Pasadena, and 

 in telegraphic communication with the whole world ; 

 and last, but by no means least, it has already an 

 able staff of workers, including men like Adams, 

 Ellerman, and Ritchey, whose names are famous 

 wherever there is an astronomer. Those who have 

 visited the mountain are enthusiastic in praise of the 

 conditions for work. A notable visit was paid by 

 Prof. Barnard, who found the times of exposure 

 required for his photographs considerably less than 

 at the Yerkes Observatory. 



The main purpose of the Mount Wilson Observa- 

 tory is solar research, but a wide interpretation must 

 be given to the term. Prof. Hale has often emphasised 

 the representative character of the sun — it is the one 

 star near enough to be examined in detail ; but it is 

 nevertheless a star, and to understand it we must 

 study it alongside other stars ; we cannot do justice 

 to the sun by working at the sun alone. Hence he 

 has insisted on an adequate equipment for stellar 

 work at Mount \\'ilson. The method of attacking 

 scientific problems along more than one line is a 

 characteristic feature of Hale's work generally, and 

 has been an important factor in his success. To give 

 a recent and striking instance. Along one line he 

 was developing the spectroheliograph to the point 

 where good photographs could be obtained in red 

 light (Ha), and this led to the discovery of the solar 

 vortices ; along another line, which might have 

 seemed irrelevant to the former, he was working at 

 the photography of sun-spot spectra, and at last 

 succeeded in getting good images of double and 

 triple lines. Forthwith the two researches met and 

 flowed in the same stream ; to test the magnetic 

 hypothesis of the vortices he could examine the spot 

 spectra polariscopically. Had either of these two 

 lines of work been neglected, the other would have 

 remained unfruitful. No doubt there was an element 

 of luck in the simultaneity with which the two became 

 available ; but luck proverbially attends on energy 

 and enterprise. H. H. Turner. 



THE BRITISH SCIENCE GUILD. 



THE fourth annual meeting of the British Science 

 Guild was held at the Mansion House on 

 March 18, when the fourth annual report upon the 

 work of the past year was presented. The Lord 

 Mavor occupied the chair, and an address was de- 

 livered by Mr. Haldane, president of the Guild. Sir 

 John Cockburn, K.C.M.G., gave a summary of the 

 report, the adoption of which was moved by Lord 

 Strathcona, and seconded by Sir Alfred Keogh, 

 K.C.B. Sir George Danvin, K.C.B., and Sir Ernest 



