Abstract
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990 and the opening of the first 10-metre sized telescope in the same year (Keck I) started a decade of optimism, both in astronomy and in international cooperation. The end of the Cold War, the end of Apartheid in South Africa soon after, and the intensification of European cooperation within the European Union, opened up a lot of new opportunities for international cooperation. For the first time since the foundation of the IAU, international relations were not dominated by a major geopolitical conflict. Economically, the end of Communism was difficult in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, which also affected astronomers, but the atmosphere of internationalism combined with economic growth in the West made it relatively easy to obtain support for new international projects.
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- 1.
IB 68 and IB 70; see also correspondence in IAU Archives box 18f, file ‘USSR’.
- 2.
IAU Archives box 1B, file ‘CAAA’. Its membership was terminated in 2002 because of arrears in paying the membership fee.
- 3.
EC minutes 65 (1994); additional documents in IAU Archives box 1A.
- 4.
IB 64 (1990).
- 5.
Smith (1989).
- 6.
Heck vol I (2000).
- 7.
IB 96 (2005) 10.
- 8.
IB 63 (1990).
- 9.
Correspondence in IAU Archives box 6, file ‘Format General Assemblies 1990–2006’.
- 10.
Membership statistics by age in IB 70.
- 11.
Débarbat (2004); see also membership statistics in IB 68.
- 12.
- 13.
As witnessed by documents and correspondence in IAU Archives box 34 ‘Women in Astronomy’.
- 14.
McNally to Pecker, 26 February 1991, in IAU Archives box 6, file ‘Format General Assemblies 1990–2006’.
- 15.
Cf Bambang Hidayat, AIP interview (1997).
- 16.
Proposal by Woltjer, 13 August 1994, in IAU Archives box 14; it was discussed in several EC meetings.
- 17.
- 18.
IB 63 (1991); also Alan Batten (S349 forthcoming).
- 19.
- 20.
IB 101 (2008) 29.
- 21.
See for example Brian Marsden, AIP interview (2005).
- 22.
IB 86 (2000) 3.
References
Cesarsky, C.: Women in astronomy: IAU statistics. IAU IB. 106, 28–34 (2010)
Débarbat, S.: Statistics on women in the IAU membership. In: Heck, A. (ed.) Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy, vol. 5, pp. 189–195. Springer, Dordrecht (2004)
Smith, R.W.: The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA, Science, Technology, and Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1989)
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Andersen, J., Baneke, D., Madsen, C. (2019). Opening Up (1990–2000). In: The International Astronomical Union. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96965-7_5
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