Otto Struve - Life in The US

Life in The US

In late 1921, Struve began working as a stellar spectroscopy assistant at Yerkes with a monthly salary of $75, starting with taking a training course. The observatory was in decline and Struve was alone in class. Three more students joined him in 1922, but only for a summer, and only one of those continued later. There was no lectures, and the students were learning by reading, practice and discussions with professors.

Struve proved to be a quick learner and talented scientist. Five months after arrival, he made his first discovery of a pulsating star at Gamma Ursae Minoris and wrote an article on it in September 1922. He was spending more time with observations than anyone at Yerkes, trying every telescope available there, also making weather observations at Williams Bay. On October 24, 1922, he discovered the asteroid 991 McDonalda and on November 14 of the same year, another asteroid 992 Swasey.

As early as December 1923, Struve defended his PhD thesis on short-period spectroscopic double stars at the University of Chicago. Frost helped him in waiving some required PhD examinations, e.g. in French and German, stating that Struve had done ample reading of scientific literature back in Russia, and was fluent in those languages. Struve then became an instructor (January 1924), assistant professor (1927) and full professor (1932) at the university. His rapid promotion was again assisted by Frost, who also used job-offer letters from other observatories to Struve as proof that Struve was a highly valued scientist who must be kept at Chicago University. Between 1932 and 1947, Struve headed Yerkes Observatory; from 1939 to 1950 he acted as a founding director of the McDonald Observatory, and from July 1, 1952 to 1962 served as the first director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at University of Virginia. All those years, he remained in America except for conferences and an 8-month sabbatical leave to Cambridge University between August 1928 and May 1929. He applied for and won a Guggenheim Fellowship to cover his travel to, and living expenses in, Cambridge. While in Cambridge, Struve mostly worked on interstellar matter; he also went on a short trip to Leiden to meet Jan Oort.

Struve was a highly successful administrator who brought fame to Yerkes Observatory and rebuilt the astronomy department of the University of Chicago. In particular, he gradually renewed the scientific staff, dismissing stagnated permanent researchers who were not making significant contributions to science but were occupying the faculty positions. The process was difficult. Struve used to arrive first and leave last from the observatory, taking notes on working hours of staff which he then used in his bureaucratic moves. In replacement, he hired several young and talented researchers who later became world-famous scientists. Those included Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1983), Gerard Kuiper (protagonist of the famous Kuiper Prize), Bengt Strömgren, Gerhard Herzberg (Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1971), William Wilson Morgan and Jesse L. Greenstein. After World War II, he also invited a number of leading European researchers, such as Pol Swings, Jan Oort (father of radio astronomy), Marcel Minnaert, H. C. van der Hulst and Albrecht Unsöld. As most of them were foreigners, their appointment met strong opposition from the science officials for various reasons, such as taking jobs from Americans during the Great Depression. India-born Chandrasekhar, who stayed in the Soviet Union, was also suspected of Communist connections. Struve spent extraordinary efforts defending and justifying each case, and those efforts paid off in building the scientific school at Yerkes and Chicago University. For example, Chandrasekhar spent his entire career as a scientist and administrator at Chicago University, assisting Struve and eventually replacing him as president of the American Astronomical Society (from 1949) and as the Editor in Chief of the Astrophysical Journal.

By the late 1940s, many young researchers whom Struve invited to Yerkes became established scientists. This created friction, as they did not want to follow his every word and were building their own careers. In 1947, Struve resigned as director of Yerkes Observatory and became chairman of the astronomy department at Berkeley and director of the Leuschner Observatory. He was succeeded by Kuiper at Yerkes; their relations were strained at times because of Struve's tendencies to keep control of Yerkes management. There were also rumors of similar strains between Struve and Chandrasekhar, but they were always dispersed by the latter, who insisted that Struve always kept scientific relations with his colleagues above the administrative ones. One reason for Struve's move to Berkeley was his tiredness of bureaucracy. In Berkeley, he was spending more time with personal research and students than ever before.