Horace W. Babcock

Horace W. Babcock
Born	September 13, 1912
Died	August 29, 2003 (aged 90)
Nationality	United States
Fields	astronomy
Known for	adaptive optics Babcock Model
Notable awards	Henry Draper Medal (1957) Eddington Medal (1958) Bruce Medal (1969) Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1970) George Ellery Hale Prize (1992)

Horace Welcome Babcock (September 13, 1912 – August 29, 2003) was an American astronomer. He was the son of Harold D. Babcock.

Career

Babcock invented and built a number of astronomical instruments, and in 1953 was the first to propose the idea of adaptive optics.^[1] He specialized in spectroscopy and the study of magnetic fields of stars. He proposed the Babcock Model, a theory for the magnetism of sunspots.

During World War II, he was engaged in radiation work at MIT and Caltech. After the war he began a productive collaboration with his father. His undergraduate studies were at Caltech and his doctorate from University of California, Berkeley.^[2]

Babcock's doctoral thesis contained one of the earliest indications of dark matter. He reported measurements of the rotation curve for Andromeda which suggested that the mass-to-luminosity ratio increases radially.^[3] He, however, attributed it to either absorption of light within the galaxy or modified dynamics in the outer portions of the spiral and not to any form of missing matter.

He was director of the Palomar Observatory for Caltech from 1964 to 1978.

Honors

Awards

• Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1957)^[4]
• Eddington Medal (1958)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1959)^[5]
• Bruce Medal (1969)^[6]
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1970)^[7]
• George Ellery Hale Prize of the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division (1992)

Named after him

• Asteroid 3167 Babcock (jointly with his father)
• Babcock crater on the Moon is named only for his father

References

1. "'Adaptive optics' come into focus". BBC. 18 February 2011. Retrieved 24 June 2013.
2. Hockey, Thomas (2009). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Retrieved August 22, 2012.
3. Babcock, H, 1939, “The rotation of the Andromeda Nebula”, Lick Observatory bulletin ; no. 498
4. "Henry Draper Medal". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 24 February 2011.
5. "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 April 2011.
6. "Past Winners of the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal". Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Retrieved 24 February 2011.
7. "Winners of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society". Royal Astronomical Society. Retrieved 24 February 2011.

External links

• Bruce Medal page
• Awarding of Bruce Medal
• Awarding of RAS gold medal
• H.W. Babcock, "The Possibility of Compensating Astronomical Seeing", PASP 65 (1953) 229
• Oral History interview transcript with Horace Babcock 25 July 1977, American Institute of Physics, Niels Bohr Library and Archives
• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir

Obituaries

• PASP 116 (2004) 290 (not available online yet, see )
• Preston, George W. (2004). "Obituary: Horace Welcome Babcock (1912–2003)". Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 116 (817): 290–294. Bibcode:2004PASP..116..290P. doi:10.1086/382664.