Biographical Memoirs Volume 58 (1989) / Chapter Skim
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Charles Donald Shane
Charles Donald Shane
Pages 488-511
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From page 489... ...
The most prominent period of Shane's professional life was his directorship of Lick Observatory of the l:~niversity of California from 1945 until 1958. During those thirteen years, he initiated anct virtually completed the 120-inch reflector, the largest hick telescope.
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From page 490... ...
Futhey's son, also named Robert, was reported to have married Isabella KicId, daughter of Captain Kidd. The family moved westward step by step, and in 1882 Donald Shane's grandfather, Robert Scott Futhey, made the long trip from Kansas to California, where he established a ranch near Auburn.
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From page 491... ...
Still, he was not certain that he could make a living in astronomy. He chose to major in this subject only after the University of California advisors assured him that the Berkeley Astronomy Department was outstanding ant!
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From page 492... ...
At the end of 1920 Shane married Mary Lea Heger, and their union continued until the ens! of his life.
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From page 493... ...
Because of the superior spectroscopic equipment then available at Lick Observatory, Shane was able to show that what had previously been supposed to be bright emission lines in the spectra of carbon stars were actually gaps between absorption lines and bands. While working on his thesis Shane also became interested in o Ceti, the well-known long-period variable star, and publishec!
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From page 494... ...
1954, covering about 70 percent of the sky on ~ 7 x ~ 7-inch photographic plates, each depicting a 6° x 6° area. In order to measure the stellar proper motions, a second set of photographs tract to be taken a few decades later.
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From page 495... ...
Peebles recognized that the counts were a goIcI mine for cosmological studies of structure in the universe, being the only existing statistically uniform, comprehensive set of data covering a large fraction of the celestial sphere. The main result to emerge from Peeble's theoretical analysis was that the galaxy clustering shows no characteristic length scales.
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From page 496... ...
He borrowed a Ross five-inch lens from Mount Wilson Observatory and took all the photographs, but then cleciclect to forego the counting. This set of photographs, however, known as the Lick Sky Atlas, turned out to be quite useful to astronomers as a reference atlas.
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From page 497... ...
He was appointed a University of California Regent in 1948 ant] chairman of the Lick Observatory Committee in 1951.
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From page 498... ...
John A Anderson, who tract supervisecl the Palomar telescope project, also met with the committee, and Walter Baacle providecl copious advice.
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From page 499... ...
the telescope's completion. Since galaxies constituted one of the important research topics at Mount Wilson anct Palomar Observatories, Shane was instrumental in arranging regular informal meetings between their astronomers working in this field!
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From page 500... ...
Shane strongly recommended Nicholas U Mayall for appointment as the seconct director of Kitt Peak National Observatory, to succeec!
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From page 501... ...
them, as Shane knew, to get very high clispersion and thus resolve the fine structure of incliviclual spectral lines. He realized that, combined with only a moderate focallength camera, such an echellette couIcl provide the high clispersion needed!
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From page 502... ...
Previous laboratory spectroscopists had occasionally used cross-dispersion to get rid of unwanted orders but no one had ever mapped out the spectrum in a twodimensional format like this. Shane wrote Wood in April of 1946 outlining these ideas and providing a specific numerical example of the design.
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From page 503... ...
In 1946 it was ahead of its time, however, for neither echellettes nor echelles couch be obtained that were large enough and suitably blazed. Shane was not able to build a Cassegrain echelle spectrograph for the 120-inch reflector.
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From page 504... ...
He taught considerably more than would normally have been expected of him, and he considered it the most important and rewarding part of his work. He was a good teacher, and as the University of California was one of the leading centers of graduate work in astronomy in the world, in his astrophysics classes he taught many students who later became outstanding researchers.
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From page 505... ...
tor every occasion. FAMILY LIFE Donald and Mary Shane were an exceptionally close and cooperative married couple, and Mary had an important role in Donald's personal anc!
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From page 506... ...
Letters from almost every notable American astronomer since Simon Newcomb, as well as from many European scientists, can be founct in the Shane Archives. RETIREMENT YEARS After retirement Donald anct Mary Shane livecl at their home in the redwoods at Scotts Valley, near Santa Cruz.
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From page 507... ...
WE ARE GRATEFUL to archivists at the Niels Bohr Library of the American Institute of Physics and at the Mary Lea Shane Archives of Lick Observatory for making available their rich stores of information for this biography. Transcripts of several interviews Donald Shane gave to historians were especially useful, as were his own handwritten autobiographical notes, composed in the last years of his life.
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From page 508... ...
The form of the green nebular bands in Nova Aquilae III.
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From page 509... ...
Bull., 13: 123-29. 1932 The photometry of lines in the solar spectrum.
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From page 510... ...
Distribution of extragalactic nebulae in three selected areas.
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From page 511... ...
Wood. The Mount John University Photographic Sky Survey and the Canterbury Sky Atlas (Australia'.
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