A New Director
Following the resignation of Director Richard van der Riet Woolley, who left for England in 1955 to become Astronomer Royal, the most senior member of the Observatory, Arthur Hogg, acted as director while a replacement was recruited. Although Woolley recommended Olin Eggen, who had been at Stromlo since 1951, it was Harvard-based Bart Bok who was offered the position.
Bok commenced a fellowship at Harvard in 1929, and there he met fellow astronomer and future wife Priscilla Fairfield. Bok’s special interest was the Milky Way, and a move to Australia was an opportunity to pursue his research on the Southern Milky Way. At Harvard, Bok’s mentor Harlow Shapley had become a victim of McCarthyism and Bok’s continuing support of Shapley stifled his career. Funding cuts and changing priorities saw Bok’s work sidelined, although he pivoted to become an expert in radio astronomy with useful connections across the optical and radio astronomy fields, just the type of person needed for the top job at Stromlo. In March 1957 Bart Bok commenced as Director of Mount Stromlo Observatory and Professor and Head of the Department of Astronomy at the Australian National University.
In October 1957 the first photograph of the Russian satellite Sputnik I was taken at Mount Stromlo Observatory by Kurt Gottlieb and Bok, seven months into his role at Stromlo, was asked to address both houses of parliament to explain, the first time an astronomer had been asked to do so. Bok excelled in publicising astronomy and the work at Stromlo, giving an average of three public lectures every month and never refusing an invitation to speak at a community gathering or school. Bok also instigated public astronomy nights at the Observatory, which proved very popular.
In the late 1950s the search began for a suitable site for a Mount Stromlo Observatory Field Station. Initially around twenty sites were considered, and this was narrowed down to four sites for serious consideration - Mt Bingar near Griffith, New South Wales; Yenda, New South Wales; Watson’s Trip on Boona Mountain near Condoblin, New South Wales; and Mount Arapiles near Natimuk, Victoria. It was important the location have a high frequency of clear nights for observation, be at least 800 feet above the level of its surrounds, be a relatively dust-free environment, and be located as far south as practical (Bok, 1960). Mount Bingar became an early frontrunner and a temporary field station with a 26-inch reflector began regular observations there from December 1959.
In 1963 Bok organised a symposium as part of the International Astronomical Union and International Scientific Radio Union Symposium on The Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds, with sessions in Canberra and Sydney. This was a great showcase for Australian astronomy, with many overseas participants.
Prior to Richard van der Riet Woolley’s departure as Director, he had begun to establish a graduate program, and Bok enthusiastically continued these plans, developing an extensive postgraduate program that included summer vacation programs and astronomy and astrophysics courses for both Australian and international students. Bok considered the success of this program to be the crowning achievement of his time at Stromlo.
When Bok arrived at Stromlo, he found that four of the Observatory’s five telescopes were not working – the 74-inch, the Uppsala-Schmidt, the 50 inch (formerly the Great Melbourne Telescope) and the Yale-Columbia. The only telescope that was functional was the Reynolds, although Bok was not happy with its performance. Years were spent getting all the telescopes functioning properly. One of Bok’s most significant accomplishments was overseeing the installation of a Coude spectrograph on the 74-inch telescope. The process was intricate and challenging but by 1960 it was successfully completed and resulted in the telescope becoming much more useful and for the first time able to be used for high resolution spectroscopy of stars and quantitative analysis of stellar spectra (Bhathal, Sutherland & Butcher, 2014).
In 1960 an IBM 610 computer was rented for use at the Observatory. IBM had only released this computer three years prior and it became the first computer ever used at the Australian National University. The machine featured vacuum tubes, a magnetic drum, and punched paper tape readers, and its printed output was via an IBM electric typewriter (Bhathal, Sutherland & Butcher, 2014).
