Albert Edward Whitford

Albert Edward Whitford, a research astrophysicist and a director, successively, of the Washburn and Lick Observatories, died in Madison, Wisconsin, on 28 March 2002 following a short illness. He was especially well known for his pioneering work on photoelectric photometry of stars and galaxies—which led to knowledge of their physical properties and distances—and of the interstellar dust in our galaxy.

Albert was born in Milton, Wisconsin, on 22 October 1906 and received his BAin physics in 1926 at Milton College. That fall, he moved on to graduate work at the University of Wisconsin in nearby Madison, where he specialized in experimental physics.

He managed to get a part-time assistantship with Joel Stebbins, a pioneer of the electrical photometry of stars, who was a professor of astronomy at Wisconsin and director of the university’s Washburn Observatory with its old 15.6-inch refractor on campus. Stebbins, a skilled astronomer, used a photocell, and a galvanometer mounted in the dome to detect and measure faint starlight. Albert, with his knowledge and experience in electronics—the cutting-edge laboratory technology of those days—developed a vacuum-tube amplifier for use with the telescope. Also, by placing the photocell and the tube in a vacuum chamber, Whitford reduced the cosmic-ray noise and thus greatly increased the sensitivity of the system. With the new apparatus and with Albert as his collaborator and electronics expert, Stebbins was soon pushing the measurements down to much fainter stars.

Albert decided to become an astronomer. He learned about the research problems of the time by hard study, pretty much on his own. After receiving his PhD in physics from Wisconsin in 1932, with Charles Mendenhall, chairman of the physics department, and Stebbins as his advisers, he continued as a full-time assistant to Stebbins for a year, but then moved to the West Coast to spend two years at Caltech and Mount Wilson Observatory.

At Mount Wilson, Albert observed with Stebbins, who traveled west frequently to use the big telescopes. In 1935, Albert returned to Wisconsin to take a research position in the astronomy department. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1938. Stebbins depended heavily on him for his electronics expertise. The pair continued their collaboration, observing at Washburn and also at Mount Wilson, whenever they could get telescope time there. Their observing visits to California were partly funded by the 200-inch project, because its leaders recognized that photoelectric photometry, then an arcane art, would be very important in the Palomar telescope’s future.

In the summer of 1940, after the fall of France during World War II, Albert—well known among physicists for his electronics know-how—was recruited to join MIT’s nascent Radiation Laboratory, America’s radar-development center, headed by Lee DuBridge. Whitford moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his family in early January 1941. In early 1946, he returned to Wisconsin as an associate professor of astronomy. He and Stebbins had always wanted to measure quantitatively the radiation from stars over as wide a spectral range as possible, so Albert moved quickly to obtain and put into astronomical use new infrared detectors—lead sulfide and, later, germanium cells developed by physicists during the war—to extend the range to 2 microns.

When Stebbins retired in 1948, Albert was promoted to full professor and director of the Washburn Observatory. He continued observing at Mount Wilson and at Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California. For his research primarily on faint galaxies and also on objects near the center of our galaxy, Albert worked in cooperation with Edwin Hubble and Walter Baade at Mount Wilson. At Washburn, Whitford worked mostly on photoelectric photometry of faint, highly luminous O and B stars. W. W. Morgan at nearby Yerkes Observatory used Whitford’s results to determine the extinction of their light by interstellar dust along the line of sight to those distant objects, and thus to locate the spiral arms in our galaxy.

About 1956, Albert succeeded in convincing the Wisconsin administration to provide funds for a new, research-level 36-inch Cassegrain reflector at a new Pine Bluff Observatory to be built outside the city of Madison and its bright lights. The telescope was optimized for photoelectric photometry and spectrophotometry, and proved useful for astrophysical research on stars, galaxies, and even gaseous nebulae after it became operational in 1958.

Soon after the Pine Bluff telescope’s dedication, Whitford left for California to accept the directorship of Lick Observatory, whose 120-inch reflector, then the second largest telescope in the world, had been under construction for several years. He devoted full time and all his energy to pushing the telescope through to completion and into full operation by early 1960.

Although he was quiet and understated, Albert was also determined and decisive. By the 1960s, he was a leader in American astronomy. Scientists trusted his clear thinking and careful study of problems in which he was involved. He played an important role in the conferences and committees that led to the founding, in 1957, of what became Kitt Peak National Observatory, the first observatory built specifically for use by all American research astronomers. Albert also chaired the first survey of the needs of astronomy, organized by the National Academy of Sciences. NSF and other governmental agencies widely accepted and used the resulting “Whitford Report” for long-range planning. The report was so successful that the survey has been repeated each decade since, and the report has been used as a model by other sciences, including physics.

In 1968, Albert stepped down from the directorship of Lick Observatory, but he continued active research and observing until he reached the mandatory retirement age in 1973. As an emeritus professor, his interest in astrophysical research never flagged. He continued observing, on long trips to Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, and he read papers assiduously, attended colloquia and meetings, and discussed current work with his younger colleagues.

At age 90, he moved from Santa Cruz, where the Lick Observatory staff had relocated in 1966 under his leadership, to Madison. There, as a visiting emeritus professor at the University of Wisconsin, he shared an office in the astronomy department, where he continued to read and discuss research.

Albert was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1954, and was the president of the American Astronomical Society from 1967 to 1970. The AAS bestowed its highest honor, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship, on Albert in 1986. In 1996, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific awarded him its Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal. Astronomers everywhere respected and admired him.