Biographical Memoirs Volume 73 (1998) / Chapter Skim
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CHARLES GREELEY ABBOT
CHARLES GREELEY ABBOT
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13io,qraphicat Memoirs VOLUME 73
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at laboratory work, he came to the attention of Samuel Pierpont Langley, who was looking for an assistant at the Smithsonian's Astrophysical Observatory (APO)
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~ Certainly the idea that solar radiation governed the Earth's fate as an abode for life was not original with Langley.
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Astrophysical operations continued unabated, with Walcott providing advice and support that allowed Abbot to extend Langley's mission in two ways: first, by developing refined techniques for the specific determination of the solar constant, and second, by applying these techniques in a standardized manner to build a synoptic monitoring program that would search for solar variations. As under Langley, Abbot found Walcott wholly attuned to the progressive notion of useful science.
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Yet the Smithsonian's Astrophysical Observatory pursuer! its single mission all along, elaborating on its purpose not by a broadening of its astronomical base but by refining its instrumentation and technique, searching for evidence that Earth's meteorology and biology were intimately connecter!
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results from observations at Mount Wilson, California, that reclucec! the solar constant first to 2.]
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This technical feat, requiring the cooperation of the Weather Bureau and the Signal Corps, quieted criticism of the Smithsonian value for the solar constant. It helpec!
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His first major permanent station was at George Ellery HaTe's Mount Wilson Solar Observatory, which Abbot starter! visiting as it was being built in 1903 en c!
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when his California site experienced cloudy weather. He had hoped to gain the cooperation of the Australian government, but eventually Wolcott approved the use of Hodgkins Fund income to build a station in South America, where the United States was building a strong mining base.
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the Mt. Wilson station to the Harqua Hala Mountains in southwestern Arizona, which C
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Table Mountain, what he later heralclec! as the "Smithsonian observing tunnel," a new form of observatory.
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Turning any criticism into a challenge for support of a noble cause, Abbot found the means to improve his instruments and to establish a third outstation, since he knew that three independent stations were the minimum number he required for a definitive synoptic monitoring network. In 1925 he had little trouble convincing the Grosvenor family that the National Geographic Society should grant $55,000 to establish a third station somewhere in the eastern hemisphere.
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With Roebling en c! National Geographic Society support he closet!
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five distinct types of pyrheliometers, inclucling the silver clisk, water flow, water stir, improvec! Angstrom, en c!
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Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian under Walcott with responsibilities for the Smithsonian library en c! the venerable International Exchange Service.
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His greatest misses! opportunity was not securing Andrew Mellon's National Gallery of Art as part of the Smithsonian Institution.
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his belief that solar constant variations existec! and could predict terrestrial weather changes.
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with other like-minclec! institutions in scientific Washington, such as with the Weather Bureau, the National Geographic Society, the National Academy of Sciences, en c!
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Abbot left no issue. MATERIAL FOR THIS MEMOIR came from letters in the Charles Greeley Abbot papers, Smithsonian Institution Archives, which contains some 176 cubic feet of Astrophysical Observatory correspondence, data books and charts, photographs, manuscripts, speeches, and budgets.
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The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory: Background and History, 1846-1955. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian.
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The more notable among them include: along with his popular monographs, 1904 The 1900 Solar Eclipse Expedition of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution. Washington, D.C.: U
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1966 An account of the Astrophysical Observatory of the Smithsonian Institution, 1904-1953. Smithson.
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