Horace Babcock
San Diego CA 92198

Bio:
A noted astronomer who discovered that stars possess magnetic fields and who pioneered the field of adaptive optics, Horace Babcock was director emeritus of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. He published extensively on stellar magnetic fields and the sun's 22-year magnetic cycle, and was widely acknowledged to be a leader in the area of adaptive optics, which develops optical techniques to compensate for atmospheric distortion and other phenomena that interfere with astronomical ¿seeing.¿ Babcock earned his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1938. He served as an instructor at the University of Chicago, 1940-41, then spent a year at the MIT Radiation Lab. From 1942 to 1945, he was with the OSRD Rocket Project at Caltech, his work there earning him the U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance Development Award. He was on the staff of the Mount Wilson Observatory, Carnegie Institution of Washington, from 1946 to 1948, and of the Hale Observatories - which comprised the Mount Wilson, Palomar, and Las Campanas Observatories - from 1948 to 1980. He was director from 1964 to 1978. Babcock was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1954, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959, and the American Philosophical Society in 1966, and was an associate of the Royal Astronomical Society (London) and a corresponding member of the Société Royale des Sciences (Liège). His other honors include the Eddington Medal (1957) and Gold Medal (1970) of Britain's Royal Astronomical Society, and the American Astronomical Society's Hale Prize (1992). Dr. Babcock passed away in 2003.

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