McDonald Observatory Director

Cosmochemist David Lambert assumed the directorship of the McDonald Observatory on 1 October. Located in West Texas, the observatory is run by the University of Texas at Austin, where Lambert has been on the astronomy faculty since 1969. He succeeds Frank Bash, who served as director for about 14 years.

Lambert says his first priority is to get the observatory’s Hobby—Eberly Telescope “really up to doing a lot more science.” The 10-meter telescope is up and running, he says, but its image quality will be sharpened over the next year or two. A second goal is to explore becoming a partner in a very large telescope. “We would like a significant share in a large telescope—20 meters or whatever,” he says.

The search for an observatory director took more than a year. And it will continue even now that Lambert has taken the job because, he says, “I think the community needs a young face that will shake things up a bit.”