Wired: Lisa Grossman has written an extensive article on the uncertain future of the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin—the self-proclaimed “birthplace of modern astronomy.”
Administered by the University of Chicago, the 113-year-old observatory once claimed one of the best astronomical libraries in the country, the world’s largest refracting telescope, and all the university’s astronomy faculty and graduate students, including the Nobel laureate Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Now, however, most of the faculty and the books from the library have migrated to the university campus. Grossman took a tour of the observatory to see it as it is today and find out what is going to happen to it.
