The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [82]
There was no question that Shapley, the thirty-five-year-old rising star, would defend his Big Galaxy idea. But who to pick for the other side? Lick Observatory director W. W. Campbell was briefly considered to champion the island universes, but Curtis, who had been devoting his professional life at Lick to this issue, was ultimately chosen, as by then he had become the leading spokesman for the claim. In terms of personalities, it was an interesting matchup. Shapley was acknowledged to be the “daring innovator, pressing the last bit of information from his observations, unafraid to extrapolate from the known to the unknown…occasionally depending upon intuition to supply connecting links.” Curtis, on the other hand, was considered a “cautious, sometimes overcautious, conservative who weighed every observation and more often concluded ‘not proven’ than ‘not so.’” Though not as prominent a figure as Shapley, Curtis was a respected astronomer nonetheless; by then forty-seven years old, bespectacled, and far less brash than his younger contender, he struck one as being a distinguished banker. Despite this stolid appearance, however, he proved to be the more venturesome one in regard to the upcoming talk.
With more professional experience under his belt, Curtis was quite comfortable at a podium and eager for a good tussle. But for Shapley, then ill at ease as a speaker, public exposure at this time was problematic. British historian Michael Hoskin first pointed out that Shapley had come to believe he was the front-runner for the directorship of the Harvard College Observatory, one of astronomy's most prestigious positions. Edward Pickering had recently died, having established a monumental legacy, and the search for his replacement was actively under way. Though young and completely untested in managing a world-class research institution, Shapley submitted his name for consideration, wanting to advance his career and strike while the iron was hot. Though he would be leaving the world's biggest telescopes, Shapley was enticed by Harvard's extensive collection of photographic plates, which offered a lush resource for the problems in which he was most interested. “Perhaps Harvard is amateurish, compared with Mount Wilson,” he told Russell, “but you and I…realize the enormous possibilities of the place.” More than that, it was an opportunity for Shapley to get away from his troubled relationship with Mount Wilson's deputy director, Walter Adams. Given this ambition, he worried how he would come across to certain members of the National Academy audience, who might have influence in the final decision. Curtis was known to be a dynamic lecturer; Shapley feared he would look bad by comparison. A letter from Curtis before the debate didn't calm his fears: “I am sure that we could be just as good friends if we did go at each other ‘hammer and tongs.’ … A good friendly ‘scrap’ is an excellent thing once in a while; sort of clears up the atmosphere.”
There was a flurry of correspondence between the participants and the National Academy in the months before the event, aimed at establishing the rules of engagement. Curtis was eager to air the controversy in a no-holds-barred debate. He told Shapley he wanted to “‘take the lid off’ and definitely attack each other's view-point.” But Shapley had a different agenda altogether. He wanted to discuss solely his new super-sized model of the Milky Way and even informed Russell a few weeks before the debate that he didn't intend to say much about the spiral nebulae at all. “I have neither time nor data nor very good arguments,” he lamented. In fact, Shapley was relieved that the chosen title for the lecture, “The Scale of the Universe,” was ambiguous enough to allow him to carry out his plan. Shapley was quite reluctant to dwell on the spiral nebulae, a subject with such uncertain evidence.