GOLDBERG, LEO

(b. Brooklyn, New York, 26 January 1913; d. Tucson, Arizona, 1 November 1987),

solar physics, space astronomy.

Goldberg was an American solar physicist whose research and organizational efforts helped pioneer efforts to study the Sun from outer space. He played a prominent role in building up the Department of Astronomy at the University of Michigan (1946–1960) before moving to Harvard University. He served as director of the Harvard College Observatory from 1966 to 1971. His final post before retirement was director of the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona, from 1971 to 1977. In addition to his research in solar physics, Goldberg was influential in reshaping the institutional and instrumental landscape of astronomy in the United States after World War II. He contributed to the formation of national observatory facilities for both radio as well as optical astronomy and advocated space-based astronomical research.

Childhood and Education . Goldberg’s parents emigrated to the United States from eastern Poland before World War I broke out. They settled in Brooklyn and worked in that city’s garment industry. They were strongly orthodox and Leo, a middle child, attended a Jewish parochial school in Brooklyn. His family was poor; a colleague once recalled that Goldberg was the quintessential Horatio Alger character. In 1922 disaster struck the family when a tenement fire killed Leo’s mother and younger brother. His father soon remarried and in 1925 moved Leo and his older brother to New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Goldberg earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard in 1934, attending that school on a scholarship. He initially planned on becoming an engineer but later switched to astronomy. This was somewhat risky given Goldberg’s precarious personal finances and the relative dearth of professional opportunities for those choosing a career in astronomy at this time.

Goldberg remained at Harvard for his graduate work. His advisor there was Donald H. Menzel, an early practitioner of theoretical astrophysics in the United States who had come to Harvard from Lick Observatory in 1932. For his dissertation research Goldberg studied the intensities of lines in the helium spectrum, an important part of interpreting spectra from the Sun and other stars. In 1938, after the completion of his doctorate, Harvard awarded Goldberg a special postdoctoral fellowship. He later discovered it was a gift from a professor whose son Goldberg had tutored a few years earlier. This fellowship enabled Goldberg to continue his research and visit the renowned California observatories at Mount Wilson and Lick.

The University of Michigan . Goldberg remained at Harvard until 1941 when, with Menzel’s help, he landed a

more secure post at the McMath-Hulbert Observatory, a small observatory near Detroit, Michigan. It was founded in the 1920s by Robert R. McMath, a young Detroit businessman who began making astronomical observations with a prominent Michigan judge, Henry S. Hulbert. During the 1930s the observatory gained fame for its motion pictures of solar activity and, in 1932, it became part of the University of Michigan.

Soon after Goldberg arrived in Michigan, the United States entered World War II. Goldberg was determined to contribute to war-related research. He considered returning to Cambridge to work in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Radiation Laboratory on radar, but he decided to remain at the McMath-Hulbert Observatory. McMath’s Washington contacts helped bring research contracts from Vannevar Bush’s National Defense Research Committee to the observatory. Goldberg spent the war as a consultant to the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance, researching antiaircraft applications and bomb-sight designs. In 1943 he met and married Charlotte Wyman, a local schoolteacher. They had two sons, Edward and David, and a daughter, Suzanne.

After the war Goldberg was eager to leave the confines of the McMath-Hulbert Observatory for a major university position. He considered an offer from Lyman Spitzer to join Yale University, where he could carry out astronomical research with captured German rocket technology. However, the University of Michigan proposed that Goldberg chair its astronomy department and he began his tenure there in November 1946.

Goldberg’s main challenge was to rebuild an astronomy department much depleted during the war and which lacked major optical telescope facilities. The best and most modern equipment was still located at the McMath-Hulbert Observatory, nearly 60 miles away; this included a recently completed twenty-four-inch telescope and extensive solar observing facilities. In the late 1940s, before funding from the Office of Naval Research and the National Science Foundation (NSF) became widely available to Goldberg’s program, Judge Hulbert and local philanthropic funds supported the rejuvenation of the Michigan astronomy program and helped attract new staff and students.

Goldberg raised his department’s international profile by organizing a series of summer schools in astrophysics. Astronomers and students hailed a symposium held in 1953 as a watershed for astrophysics and astronomy. Important scientists such as Walter Baade and George Gamow spoke on some of the most important and controversial topics in astronomical research. The meetings Goldberg organized helped the field regain some of the momentum lost during the war.

While at Michigan, Goldberg continued his research on the physics of the Sun, especially the elemental abundances of the solar atmosphere. His work built on earlier studies such as those of Henry Norris Russell and took into account the variation of the Sun’s atmosphere with distance from its center. He was especially eager to exploit the scientific possibilities of rocketborne observing. As he wrote his former mentor Menzel in 1945, studying the spectra of the Sun from above Earth’s atmosphere would be worth “shaving my head and working in a cell for the next ten or fifteen years.” Nevertheless, Goldberg, like many pioneers in space-based astronomy, was frustrated by the effort required to secure even the most basic results from early rocketborne instruments. In the late 1940s most astronomers, unlike Goldberg, considered rocket-based astronomy unrealistic and outside the mainstream of scientific research.

Goldberg and National Facilities . In the 1950s Goldberg became increasingly vocal about the need for the United States to fund and build national observatories for traditional optical astronomy as well as the emerging field of radio astronomy. Part of his activism was motivated by his participation on several national panels, which debated how and to what extent the NSF should support astronomy. While Goldberg did not believe federal sources should provide all funding for astronomy, he was more enterprising than many of his colleagues in pursuing government support for research. He had already seen the benefits of this approach. By the mid-1950s his astronomy department at the University of Michigan had half of its faculty salaries paid by federal funding, the highest proportion of any program in the United States.

In 1953 Goldberg attended a national meeting on observational facilities held at Flagstaff, Arizona. Goldberg told his colleagues that the NSF should think big and beyond parochial needs. One colleague remembered Goldberg saying, “What this country needs is a truly National Observatory to which every astronomer with ability and a first-class problem can come on leave from his university” (Irwin, 1955, p. 107). Significantly, Goldberg proposed that this national, publicly funded facility rival the size of the large private telescopes at Lick and Palomar.

Goldberg’s motivation in promoting national observatories rested on two premises. In the 1950s, especially before the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the NSF’s budget allocation was relatively small. Goldberg saw the building of national facilities for astronomy as one way the NSF could strengthen its research portfolio and infrastructure. He also believed that national facilities available to scientists on a peer-reviewed basis would be beneficial to the entire astronomy community.

Goldberg’s lobbying helped bring about the formation of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. (AURA) in March 1957. Seven universities—California, Chicago, Harvard, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio State, and Wisconsin—were AURA’s original members. Astronomers and engineers soon broke ground for the first telescopes at what became Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Its facilities enabled American astronomers without access to privately owned observatories like Palomar to carry out observing programs. AURA also later established the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile, which gave U.S. and Chilean astronomers access to southern hemisphere skies. Goldberg also played a role in the formation of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) located in Green Bank, West Virginia. He was later offered the directorship of NRAO but chose instead to remain at Michigan.

As an active member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Goldberg served as a delegate to international meetings in 1958 and 1961. He also served as vice president (1958–1964) and president (1973–1976) of the IAU. Goldberg’s leadership in the IAU at times required him to balance science goals with national and international politics. For example, in 1958 the U.S. State Department asked Goldberg and Otto Struve to invite Taiwan to the 1961 IAU meeting planned for Berkeley, California, and to exclude scientists from the People’s Republic of China. At this time Taiwan, unlike the People’s Republic of China, had no astronomy program to speak of, nor was it an IAU member. The State Department’s move placed Goldberg in a difficult situation in which he wanted to avoid alienating researchers from mainland China and violating norms of scientific internationalism by not including Taiwan. Goldberg, with support from the National Academy of Sciences, negotiated a solution that brought about Taiwan’s acceptance into the IAU in 1959 and the eventual establishment of astronomy as a research field in that country. However, the People’s Republic of China broke its ties with the IAU, an event that Goldberg regretted. Nevertheless, colleagues later credited Goldberg with skillfully defusing what could have threatened the viability of the IAU as an international organization.

Goldberg also played a role in IAU negotiations concerning Project West Ford, a 1961 military experiment in which thousands of copper filaments were launched into space to see if they might serve as a communications aid. At the time West Ford was controversial among astronomers and other space scientists who feared the experiment, which ultimately failed, would interfere with research observations. Like the “two China” problem Goldberg confronted earlier, West Ford required that he find a compromise between his state and professional responsibilities.

Back to Harvard . In 1960 Goldberg accepted an offer from Harvard University’s Astronomy Department and returned to Cambridge, where he also had an appointment with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO). His move back east was in part precipitated by unhappiness with what he saw as Michigan’s reluctance to enter the emerging field of space-based astronomy.

For decades Goldberg had been interested in the elemental abundances of the solar atmosphere and the application of laboratory-based atomic physics to astrophysical problems. Goldberg was also motivated by the launches of the first Soviet and American satellites and became a spirited advocate of the scientific possibilities offered by space-based astronomy. While at Harvard he became increasingly active in helping develop the series of Orbiting Solar Observatories (OSO), which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched in the 1960s and 1970s. In March 1962 NASA launched the OSO-I spacecraft. While in operation, OSO-I monitored the Sun for solar flare activity and also scanned the sky for gamma-ray sources.

The next two satellites in the OSO series failed. However, success was achieved again in October 1967 with OSO-IV. Goldberg and other scientists took advantage of these platforms to make observations of the Sun at x-ray and ultraviolet wavelengths. While at Harvard, Goldberg also worked with Richard Tousey (Naval Research Laboratory), Gordon Newkirk (High Altitude Observatory), and Riccardo Giacconi (American Science and Engineering) on what became the Apollo Telescope Mount, which NASA flew on its 1973 Skylab mission. Skylab turned out to be an excellent solar observatory, due in part to the contributions of Goldberg and other scientists to its design.

During the 1960s Goldberg wrote or cowrote several scientific papers that helped cement his scientific reputation. For example, he and two colleagues from the University of Michigan presented several years of research in a frequently cited 1960 paper, which derived abundances for forty-two elements found in solar spectra. In 1967 Goldberg wrote a review article that gave results from a series of space-based observations of the Sun made at ultraviolet and x-ray wavelengths. Goldberg also noted the rapid progress, enabled in large part by the innovative instrumentation he advocated, scientists had made in improving spectroscopic resolution as well as advances in studying solar emission of x-rays. Finally, in 1968 Goldberg and several colleagues published data from the OSOIV mission. The observatory featured an ultraviolet spectroheliograph, a device that could photograph the Sun at a variety of wavelengths between 300 and 1,400 angstroms. This instrument and the data it produced provided scientists with a more complete and complex

picture of the Sun’s atmosphere and its three-dimensional structure.

Goldberg’s work on the OSO series impressed officials at NASA, and in 1966 NASA offered him the directorship of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He opted to remain at Harvard where he became director of the Harvard College Observatory (HCO) that same year. One of the activities that consumed Goldberg’s time at Harvard was expanding HCO’s financial support from donors as well as its facilities. His efforts resulted in additional laboratory space as HCO staff undertook more intensive research in experimental and theoretical astrophysics.

As director of the HCO, Goldberg experienced a difficult administrative relationship between his organization and the SAO. Fred L. Whipple, the SAO’s director, and Donald Menzel, the HCO’s previous director, had established interinstitutional cooperation, which served both organizations for some time. Eventually, the rapid growth of the SAO and Goldberg’s efforts to expand activities of the HCO created difficulties. These were exacerbated by the fact that Whipple sat on the HCO council while Goldberg had no corresponding influence over SAO activities or appointments. Displeased by this situation, in 1971, when AURA offered Goldberg the opportunity to direct the Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), he accepted it.

Kitt Peak and After . When Goldberg arrived at the KPNO in September 1971, the national observatory was in a crucial period of transition. For almost fifteen years KPNO had pursued an aggressive program of telescope construction. By 1970 the observatory operated several small-to-moderate size telescopes, and its 4-meter instrument was nearing completion. In Chile, engineers and astronomers were finishing another 4-meter telescope for AURA at its Cerro Tololo facility. As these new telescopes entered service, many scientists expected the national observatories to switch from building facilities to operating them efficiently, serving the user community, and, perhaps, doing frontier research rivaling the work done at places such as Palomar and Lick.

Goldberg, however, believed that not pursuing future projects would lead to poor morale and eventual decline at the observatory. He encouraged a small group of telescope engineers and astronomers to consider what large optical telescopes of the future might look like. From 1974 to 1980, staff at the KPNO proposed a diverse array of telescope designs that would feature light collecting areas as large as 15 or 25 meters. These telescope projects, Goldberg believed, represented an opportunity for the future expansion of the national observatory and U.S. astronomy in general. While not realized in his lifetime, Goldberg’s plans for national observing facilities with greater light collecting power eventually contributed to the building of the Gemini Observatories in Hawaii and Chile in the 1990s.

Not all astronomers agreed with Goldberg’s management decisions, including his efforts to recruit top-notch staff and build innovative instrumentation. Goldberg soon found himself forced to choose between providing service facilities to visiting astronomers or devoting resources to build up the quality of his observatory’s staff and instruments. This was a difficult balance to strike due to budget limitations as well as a general lack of consensus among astronomers as to the national observatory’s mission.

These debates brought Goldberg into conflict with AURA’s board and its chairman (his former classmate) Jesse L. Greenstein. The showdown between Greenstein and Goldberg was more than just a philosophical disagreement over what was best for science. At its core was a larger question of who would dominate and control astronomical research: elite universities and a relatively few autonomous observers or large national facilities serving a broader community of scientists. Their different visions of how science should be practiced and managed became sources of tension between Goldberg and Greenstein. Finally, in 1977, Goldberg stepped down as Kitt Peak’s director.

Goldberg remained at the KPNO as a research scientist. He also held a series of visiting appointments including the Martin-Marietta Chair of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum. In his lifetime, Goldberg received a number of honors including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1958 and the Distinguished Service Medal from NASA in 1973, the same year that he gave the Henry Norris Russell lecture for the American Astronomical Society. After his divorce, Goldberg married astronomer Beverly T. Lynds in January 1987, less than a year before his death from cancer.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Many of the quotes used here are drawn from Goldberg’s correspondence and papers, which are in the Harvard University Archives. Further information may be found in oral history interviews with Goldberg (including a full-length biographical interview dated 16 May 1978 by Spencer R. Weart). These interviews are in the collections of the Niels Bohr Library at the American Institute of Physics in College Park, Maryland.

WORKS BY GOLDBERG

With Edith A. Müller and Lawrence H. Aller. “The Abundances of the Elements in the Solar Atmosphere.” Astrophysical Journal Supplement 5 (1960): 1–137.

“Ultraviolet and X-Rays from the Sun.” Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 5 (1967): 279–324.

With Robert W. Noyes, William H. Parkinson, Edmond M. Reeves, et al. “Ultraviolet Solar Images from Space.” Science n.s. 162 (1968): 95–99.

OTHER SOURCES

Aller, Lawrence H. “Leo Goldberg, January 26, 1913–November 1, 1987.” In Biographical Memoirs, vol. 72. Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1994. Provides basic biographical information from a former colleague.

DeVorkin, David H. Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the US Space Sciences after World War II. New York: Springer Verlag, 1992. Presents early rocket-based research programs including those in solar physics.

Doel, Ronald E., Dieter Hoffmann, and Nikolai Krementsov. “National States and International Science: A Comparative History of International Science Congresses in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, and Cold War United States.” Osiris, n.s., 20 (2005): 49–76. Discusses, in part, Goldberg’s involvement with the IAU regarding the question of China and Taiwan.

Edmondson, Frank K. “AURA and KPNO: The Evolution of an Idea, 1952–58.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 22(1991): 68–86. Discusses the development of a national observatory for optical astronomy.

Hufbauer, Karl. Exploring the Sun: Solar Science since Galileo. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Provides information on modern programs of solar physics including Goldberg’s work on the OSO series.

Irwin, John B. Proceedings of the NSF Astronomical Photoelectric Conference. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955.

Levin, Tanya J. “Contaminating Space: Project West Ford and Scientific Communities, 1958–1965.” MA thesis, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, 2000. Described Project West Ford and Goldberg’s involvement.

McCray, W. Patrick. “The Contentious Role of a National Observatory.” Physics Today56, no. 10 (2003): 55–61.

———. Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition and the Promise of Technology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Both works by McCray discuss Goldberg’s activities in promoting national observatory facilities in the United States as well as his conflicts with his former classmate Jesse L. Greenstein.

Needell, Allan. “Lloyd Berkner, Merle Tuve, and the Federal Role in Radio Astronomy.” Osiris, n.s., 3 (1987): 261–288. Describes the debate over radio astronomy facilities that Goldberg took part in.

W. Patrick McCray