Pease, Francis Gladhelm
Born Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 14 June 1881
Died Pasadena, California, USA, 7 February 1938
American optician and spectroscopist Francis Pease is most widely remembered for his contributions to the design and construction of the 60‐, 100‐, and 200‐in. telescopes at Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories, but he also obtained the first accurate rotation curves of spiral galaxies and with Albert Michelson made the first direct measurements of the diameters of stars other than the Sun. Pease graduated from the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago (now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1901 with a BS in mechanical engineering, and received honorary MA and Sc.D. degrees from the institute in 1924 and 1927. While a student, he worked evenings at the Petitdidier optical shop, and his employers recommended him to George Ritchey , the chief optician at Yerkes Observatory. Ritchey's father had also been one of Pease's teachers at Armour. Thus, with Ritchey, Walter Adams...
Selected References
- Adams, Walter S. (1938). “Francis G. Pease.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 50: 119–121.ADSGoogle Scholar
- Anderson, J. A. (1939). “Francis G. Pease.” Journal of the Optical Society of America 29: 306–307.Google Scholar
- Anon. (1938). “Dr. Francis G. Pease.” Nature 141: 542–543.Google Scholar
- Anon. (1938). “Obituary.” Observatory 61: 198.Google Scholar
- Anon. “Obituary notices.” Los Angeles Times, 8 February 1938, pt. II, pp. 1, 5; and 9 February 1938, pt. II, p. 4.Google Scholar
- Berendzen, Richard and Richard Hart (1974). “Pease, Francis Gladhelm.” In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by Charles Coulston Gillipie. Vol. 10, p. 473. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar
- Hetherington, Norriss S. (1990). The Edwin Hubble Papers: Previously Unpublished Manuscripts on the Extragalactic Nature of Spiral Nebulae. Tucson: Pachart, p. 108. (Pease's discovery of a nova in M33 and the use of it by Edwin Hubble were not published, but are noted herein.)Google Scholar
- Livingston, Dorothy Michelson (1973). The Master of Light: A Biography of Albert A. Michelson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (See pp. 274–277 for the measurement of the diameter of Betelgeuse and pp. 302–307, 318–319, 328–338 for Michelson and Pease on the speed of light.)Google Scholar
- Michelson, A. A. and F. G. Pease (1921). “Measurement of the Diameter of α Orionis with the Interferometer.” Astrophysical Journal 53: 249–259.ADSGoogle Scholar
- Michelson, A. A., F. G. Pease, and F. Pearson (1935). “Measurement of the Velocity of Light in a Partial Vacuum.” Astrophysical Journal 82: 26–61.ADSGoogle Scholar
- Osterbrock, Donald E. (1993). Pauper and Prince: Ritchey, Hale, and Big American Telescopes. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. (A major study of Pease as a designer of astronomical instruments is yet to be written. He is mentioned, in connection with his optical mentor, George Willis Ritchey herein.)Google Scholar
- Pease, F. G. (1915). Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 27: 134.ADSGoogle Scholar
- ——— (1918). “The Rotation and Radial Velocity of the Central Part of the Andromeda Nebula.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 4: 21–24.ADSGoogle Scholar
- ——— (1920). “Photographs of Nebulae with the 60‐Inch Reflector, 1917–1919.” Astrophysical Journal 51: 276–308. (For his observations of M33.)ADSGoogle Scholar
- ——— (1928). Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 40: 342. (For a report of his identification of the planetary nebula in M15.)ADSGoogle Scholar
- ——— (1930). “The New Fifty‐foot Stellar Interferometer.” Scientific American 143, no. 4: 290–293.Google Scholar
- Pendray, G. (1935). Men, Mirrors, and Stars. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., pp. 198–220.Google Scholar
- Strömberg, Gustav (1938). “Francis G. Pease, 1881–1938.” Popular Astronomy 46: 357–359.ADSGoogle Scholar