George Ellery Hale

George Ellery Hale was a gifted astronomer who didn’t just observe things but built them, too. And what he built, lasted and still lasts today.

Around the age of 13 or 14, Hale became interested in astronomy and built his very first telescope. He had happened to become acquainted with a court stenographer in Chicago (his place of birth) who happened to be an amateur double star observer. The stenographer told the teenager about a second-hand Clark refractor that Hale then convinced his father to buy. Once the telescope was in his own hands, Hale mounted it on his house’s roof and delighted in viewing several planets and their moons; he then decided to attach a plate holder to the telescope and photographed a partial eclipse of the sun and observed sunspots, quickly becoming an apt amateur astronomer himself. Before he had even attended MIT or any institutions of higher education, Hale had created the spectroheliograph--an instrument that changed the field of studying the sun and one that Hale would perfect later in life (along with his other influential invention, the spectrohelioscope). 

In 1886, Hale made his way to the East Coast where he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in the Bay State, he worked out an arrangement with E.C. Pickering so that the budding astronomer could volunteer at the Harvard College Observatory (where he would test out his first model spectroheliograph). Upon completing his undergraduate degree, Hale returned to Chicago where he assisted his father in establishing the Kenwood Physical Observatory, which they set up practically in the family’s backyard. George Ellery spent the next several years researching at the Kenwood Observatory, taking a year off to study overseas at the University of Berlin. Back at home, the young astronomer was personally invited by the president of the University of Chicago to become an Associate Professor of Astrophysics when the Kenwood astronomer was just 24 years old. 

At the University of Chicago, the new professor quickly got to work on another project with a long-lasting impact. Along with President William Rainey Harper, Hale was instrumental in obtaining funding from Mr. Charles Tyson Yerkes for the world’s first astrophysical observatory. Attending a conference in Rochester in the summer of 1892 (Hale’s first year at the University of Chicago), the associate professor learned that the University of Southern California had plans to build the world’s largest telescope but hadn’t been able to complete the project; the two glass disks that would be ground into a lens for the hypothetical 40-inch telescope were just sitting in an optician’s shop in Massachusetts! In Chicago, Hale began designing the space for an observatory to host the world’s next largest telescope, working in equipment and instruments for an astronomical laboratory on-site, determined to make good use of the Californians’ unmoved order across the coast. The cost approached $300,000, and Yerkes himself was not particularly pleased, but he had already agreed to fund the observatory in order to give his reputation a boost (following the lead of James Lick, once the wealthiest man in California and patron of the Lick Observatory in San Jose, California). Thanks to Hale and Harper’s strong-arming the Yerkes telescope was ready to be on display by the time of the 1893 World’s Fair held in Chicago. 

When the fanfare had passed, Hale set out to develop both a solar and a stellar research program at the Yerkes Observatory as its first director. He added telescopes to the complex, including one as a gift from the Kenwood Observatory, and he perfected his spectroheliograph and published studies on red star spectra and electra spark in liquids. He also published his revolutionary discovery of the existence of magnetic fields in sunspots--what H.D. Babcock from the Carnegie Institution calls “an achievement considered by some critics as the most important development in astronomy since Galileo devised his telescope and found the moons of Jupiter.” Never one to waste a single moment, Hale also co-founded the Astrophysical Journal with fellow astronomer James Edward Keeler in 1895. Today, the Astrophysical Journal continues to exist as a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. Not even thirty years old, Hale was just beginning to write his rather incredible legacy.

Just after the turn of the century, Hale began working for the Carnegie Institution of Washington, researching how best to support astronomical research. His work led him to Mount Wilson in Los Angeles, California where he was convinced an observatory belonged after studying the onsite observing conditions. With the help of the Carnegie Institution, Hale was able to found the Mount Wilson Observatory and served as its director for almost two decades. Hale, with his extraordinary networking power, created many more important institutions while out in California. He directed a conference in Pasadena in 1910, launching the organization of the International Union for Cooperation in Solar Research which would later develop into the International Astronomical Union--a “biggie” in the history of astronomy. Another institution for which Hale was extraordinarily influential was the California Institute of Technology. When Hale was introduced to CalTech, it’s name was then actually Throop University, named after its founding philanthropist Amos Throop. Hale began serving on the school’s board of trustees in 1907 and before long Throop University was CalTech, and CalTech is still synonymous with the elite institution for engineering and scientific education and research. 

Ten years later, Hale’s vision and hard work would spawn yet another indispensable national institution. Serving as the National Academy of Science’s foreign secretary during World War I, Hale envisioned and gained support for the National Research Council--a body that would bridge all different sectors of research in a time of crisis so that all research would be streamlined and communicated rapidly to the executive branch of the US government. Even though the Council was not confronted with any specific emergency during the first world war, US President Wilson recognized its important value and made the organization a permanent fixture. 

Several years later, in 1923, when Hale retired as director of the Mount Wilson Observatory, he built the Hale Solar Laboratory close to home in Pasadena where he could focus his efforts on the sun and work uninterrupted. Though he died in Pasadena in 1938, to other researchers he left behind a trove of his personal book collection, papers, and innovative instruments; naturally, the Solar Laboratory became a national historic landmark in 1989. Before he died Hale, always one to dream of bigger and better instruments in the name of scientific research, had envisioned a 200-inch lens telescope, for which he secured funding through the Rockefeller Foundation; although he did not see the project executed while alive, the Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory was and continues to be an extraordinary establishment for the sake of scientific research. It seems as if everything Hale touched or designed has become a permanent milestone in the history of astronomy and more broadly the history of the United States. 

Hale was an incredibly productive and incredibly influential astronomer and organizer of astronomers. Walter S. Adams, a fellow astronomer at the Mount Wilson Observatory, wrote in his memorial address the Astrophysical Journal: “Hale...realized, to an extent much greater than most investigators, that the major problems of physical science are usually so extensive and complex that progress in their solution requires the co-operative effort of many individuals and many institutions. So, although by nature a strong individualist in his scientific work and in his outlook on life, he was constantly engaged in organizing plans for co-operative observations, in encouraging young investigators, and in securing the establishment of new institutions and wider and better facilities for research.” Hale had a vision of connecting astronomers and scientists together and boy did he make good on that vision.