The Day We Found the Universe - Marcia Bartusiak [91]
Shapley breathed new life into the sclerotic institution, bounding up the stairs two steps at a time and greeting everyone with a sporty cheerfulness. “He cast spells over people,” said one staff member. Pickering had run the observatory like an absolute monarch. Under the youthful and energetic Shapley, it became a band of enthusiastic workers. Leo Goldberg, a student at Harvard in the 1930s, compared him to a benevolent Mafia Godfather. On the one hand, “he inspired us all,” said Goldberg. “He pepped us up, he raised us out of the depths of discouragement many times.” But a darker side lurked within Shapley as well. Adopting a “divide and rule” principle, he could be a father figure to some, while a tyrant to others. He also stubbornly ignored new scientific data at times, if it conflicted with his personal vision of how the universe should work.
Even as Shapley settled into Harvard, his former employer requested one more task from him. He was asked to contribute to Mount Wilson's annual report, to recount the final work he carried out there in 1920. “I thought I told you that I left Mount Wilson just to avoid this ordeal,” he replied playfully. “Suppose I had lived wickedly and unrepenting died—would you even then haggle with His Majestic Nibs for your annual tithe of Blood-and-Brain?” Shapley was again being Shapley. It was his last hurrah for the California observatory. Mount Wilson got its notes.
Meanwhile, Curtis, who could have done much toward solving the mystery of the spiral nebulae, stepped out of the race entirely. Just a few months after the debate, he left the Lick Observatory to become director of the Allegheny Observatory, the same post that James Keeler once held. He had actually tendered his resignation ten days before the Washington debate took place. Being in charge of an observatory, a more highly paid position with increased prestige, was an opportunity hard to pass up, especially for a family man. But, as with Keeler, the urban setting, cloudy weather, and poorly equipped telescope at the Pennsylvania observatory ultimately prevented Curtis from making any further cutting-edge discoveries. Some considered it “the biggest mistake he ever made.” Even Curtis later confessed to his former boss Campbell that “the California combination of instruments PLUS climate is a hard one to beat… There is no place like the hill [Mount Hamilton] for astronomical work and…any man who leaves these opportunities is bound to be sorry for it.” A visiting colleague found him at Allegheny one day puttering with an instrument and chided him for turning into a toolmaker. “You play golf don't you? Well, this is my golf,” he responded.
Harlow Shapley at his wheel-like desk at the Harvard Observatory
(Harvard College Observatory, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè
Visual Archives)
Despite their differences in cosmic outlooks, Curtis and Shapley remained cordial over the years and kept in touch through correspondence. More than two years after the debate, Curtis looked back on the event—what he called their “memorable set-to”—with good humor. “I have always thought that the clubs we wielded at each other were all the more effective because politely padded,” he told Shapley, “and regard with approbation the view-point of the old lady who warmed the water in which she drowned the kittens…. I fancy we both are as stiff-necked as ever; am sure that I am; cant [sic] see that my views have changed in the slightest.” With his new responsibilities at Allegheny, though, Curtis had to remain on the sidelines, resigned to simply “watching the strife with interest,” as he put it.
A few years later, a friend from Lick asked Curtis what he would have done with the Crossley