Biographical Memoirs Volume 54 (1983) / Chapter Skim
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Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski
Rudolph Leo Bernhard Minkowski
Pages 270-299
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From page 271... ...
He was trained as a laboratory physicist, but worked most of his life as an observational astronomer. Using the largest optical telescopes in the world, he made important contributions to nearly every branch of nebular and extragalactic astronomy, but his most important contribution of all was to the identification and interpretation of cosmic radio sources.
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From page 272... ...
Minkowski, however, had been interested in astronomy from childhood; at Hamburg he soon met Walter Baade, then a young assistant to Max Wolf at the Hamburg Sternwarte. Although he continued his spectroscopic and experimental quantum mechanical research at Hamburg, Minkowski's field of specialization shifted increasingly to astrophysics, and he published his first astronomical paper with Baacle, F
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From page 273... ...
Under Director Walter Adams, the Mount Wilson staff used the 60-inch and ~ 00-inch reflectors, the latter the largest telescope then in existence, in a highly compartmentalized observational research program. One staff member, Paul Merrill, studied the spectra of M giants, supergiants, and long-periocl variables; another, Roscoe Sanforcl, studiecl the spectra of carbon stars; and a third, Alfrec!
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From page 274... ...
Minkowski, with his wide knowledge of spectroscopy, atomic physics, and applied quantum mechanics, became involvect in all these studies, but specialized in work on gaseous nebulae and related objects. He began by using the fast, low-dispersion spectrographs designed for Humason's measurements of galaxies to take spectra of faint supernovae, the highly luminous explocling stars that flare up to a brightness comparable to an entire galaxy, as they were discovered in surveys by Fritz Zwicky, Baacle, anc!
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From page 275... ...
Planetary nebulae were another subject studied by Minkowski from his first days at Mount Wilson until years after his retirement. in his early work, he obtained spectrophotometric measurements of many low-surface-brightness planetaries that had been too faint for previous investigations, and he proved that their spectra were quite similar in overall pattern to the brighter objects.
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From page 276... ...
1 ~ Minkowski was fascinated by the forms of planetary nebulae and invested large amounts of observing time with the 100-inch and later with the 200-inch Hale telescope at Palomar in taking direct photographs of inclividual objects. He used various combinations of glass filters and photographic emulsions to isolate narrow spectral regions around specific nebular emission lines, for instance, LO IlI]
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From page 277... ...
by the Rockefeller Foundation, with the understanding that Palomar was to be operated jointly with Mount Wilson Observatory by Caltech and the Mount Wilson .
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From page 278... ...
The result was the 48-inch Schmidt telescope at Palomar, a magnificentf/2.5 instrument that takes plates covering over six degrees square with excellent definition. The first large task for the 48-inch Schmidt, after it went into regular operation in 1950, was the National Geographic Society-Palomar Observatory Sky Survey.
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From page 279... ...
Convinced of the advantages of Schmidt cameras for astronomical spectroscopy, he took personal charge of the high-ctispersion couple spectrograph of the 200-inch Hale telescope, but left Minkowski responsible for the fast, lowdispersion prime-focus spectrograph and the 48-inch Schmidt. Bowen had macle the final choice of the basic optical parameters of the 48-inch, and as director he insisted that the Sky Survey be completed before the telescope was turned over to the research programs of individual staff members.
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From page 280... ...
Although their first interferometers and reflectors gave only very rough angular coordinates of the individual radio sources (originally often collect radio stars) , the very bright source, Taurus A, was soon identified with the Crab nebula by Bolton and Gordon Stanley.
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From page 281... ...
They were both highly interested in the radio-source identification problem, and collaborated very closely in their investigations; Minkowski did all of the spectroscopic work and shared with Baade the taking of the direct exposures. As senior members of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories staff, they were able to command large amounts of prime dark observing time with the two most powerful telescopes in existence, and they were willing to commit a sizeable fraction of their time to searching for the optical counterparts of radio sources.
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From page 282... ...
Minkowski continued to identify and obtain spectra of radio sources alone after Baa~le's retirement, but he in turn had to retire two years later, on June 30, 1960. A few months before his retirement, he used the 200-inch to take a spectrogram of the faint radio galaxy 3c 295, which had been iclentified by Bolton on a 48-inch Schmidt plate from an accurate
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From page 283... ...
Minkowski's record redshift remained the largest known for a galaxy for over fifteen years, until it was topped by Hyron Spinrad, James Westphal, Jerome Kristian, and AlIan Sandage with z = 0.75 for 3c 343. ~ The first quasistelIar radio sources, or quasars, were iclentified after Minkowski's retirement, again from very accurate radio positions.
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From page 284... ...
After his year at Madison, Minkowski spent some months as a guest investigator in Australia, working with Bolton on radio-source identifications. In 1961 Minkowski was appointed a research astronomer at the Berkeley Radio Astronomy Laboratory of the University of California.
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From page 285... ...
He was much stronger than most astronomers, and he could always get an extra turn out of any screw, clamp, or guiding eyepiece adjustment. The designers and instrument makers at the Mount Wilson shops used to joke that their products had to be not only "astronomer-proof" but "Minkowski-proof." His office, at the Mount Wilson headquarters on Santa Barbara Street in Pasadena, was famous for being the most cluttered of any in the building, no mean distinction.
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From page 286... ...
He was very patient in the guiding, doing a careful job all during the tiresome long exposures he took, but impatient to see the results. He would hurry into the darkroom with a recently exposed plate, develop it, give it quick rinse in water, plunge it into the hypo fixing solution, count thirty seconds, light a cigarette, and have the plate out of the hypo and be looking at it with his eyepiece before it had cleared.
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From page 287... ...
to find time for camping and fishing expeditions with his family in the High Sierras, just as in earlier years he had made time for climbing expeditions in the Alps with his fellow students. Minkowski and Baade remained close friends all the years
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From page 288... ...
Often the two of them were at Mount Wilson together, on the 60-inch and 100-inch telescopes, or later at Palomar, on the 200-inch and the 48-inch Schmidt. Then they wouicl walk together slowly up to the domes in the evening and back to the monastery in the morning, discussing astronomy loudly, in voices that carried all over the mountaintops.
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From page 289... ...
greatly to our knowledge of planetary nebulae, supernovae anct their remnants, radio sources, and galaxies; present research in these fields is along lines shaped in no small measure by his results. THIS MEMOIR iS based largely on the written record of Rudolph Minkowski's research, published in the papers listed in his bibliography, and on my personal conversations with him and with his wife Luise over the years since 1953, when I went to Caltech as a young faculty member and began working closely with him.
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From page 290... ...
1929 .. Uber die Abhangigkeit des Intensitatsverlaufs in druckverbreiterten Spektrallinien vom verbreiterndem Gas.
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From page 291... ...
der Ubergangswahrscheinlichkeit der D-Linien des Natriums aus absoluten Helligskeitsmessungen, die Dissoziation von Natriumsalzen und die Halbweite der D-Linien in der LeuchtgasLuftflamme.
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From page 292... ...
Pac., 53:224-25. 1942 Spectra of planetary nebulae of low surface brightness.
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From page 293... ...
Pac., 61 53. 1951 :151Galactic distribution of planetary nebulae and Be stars.
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Abnormal galaxies as radio sources. Observatory, 74: 130-31.
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USA, 46: 13-19. 1961 The luminosity function of extragalactic radio sources.
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Radio sources, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies.
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From page 297... ...
}., 73:842~5. Nonthermal galactic radio sources.
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From page 298... ...
J., 182:225 43. 1975 The identification of radio sources.
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