Emily Gibson’s article “NSF and postwar US science” (Physics Today, May 2020, page 40) was an enjoyable read. I have a personal footnote to add.
In 1954, as a graduating senior at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I had been interested in solar astronomy even though I was majoring in physics. Joseph Hirschberg, Newell Mack, and I took a laboratory slate tabletop and other equipment to Mellen, Wisconsin, to observe an eclipse.
Although we did not get the information we wanted during that eclipse, another one was going to occur in the South Pacific in 1958. Groups from the High Altitude Observatory, the Sacramento Peak Observatory, and other facilities were planning to go there with support from the US Navy.
Julian Mack, who had been my senior thesis adviser, suggested that I write a proposal. He signed it, sent it to the Office of Naval Research (ONR), and then went off for an appointment as a scientific attaché in Sweden.
I received a letter from the ONR that they no longer provided general scientific support for the study of solar eclipses. But a new federal agency, the National Science Foundation, now handled such proposals, and the ONR forwarded my request. A while later I received a letter from NSF that included a check to fund the trip.
I took the check to the department chair, Ragnar Rollefson, who said he would have an account opened so that I could spend funds for equipment and travel. Time was short to have equipment dockside at Naval Base San Diego for the navy to take it to Pukapuka, New Zealand, via Honolulu. So I asked George Streander, Mack’s instrument maker, if he would sign on and help make the equipment to study the eclipse. I designed an observation hut and gave lumber estimates to the navy, which would get the wood in Hawaii. I also designed the optics and heliostat; George made castings and all the fine parts, and he suggested bearings and a drive system for the heliostat. Narrow band-pass filters, lenses, photographic plate holders, tools, and other items were ordered and purchased. The university carpentry shop made the boxes for the equipment, and we took them to the train station in Madison for shipment.
We were ready at Pukapuka, but the weather wasn’t. Clouds prevented most of the observers from getting data, although the rocket launches from the ship deck were successful.
Later on, in the 1960s, I served as the program director for Solar Terrestrial Research at NSF while on leave from Los Alamos National Laboratory. And in 1973 NSF approved a grant for my study of the total solar eclipse over Africa aboard a prototype Concorde, whose supersonic speed allowed 74 minutes of observing the Sun’s corona.
