George Ellery Hale: Prince of the Sun

Available for over a year

A celebration of the amazing work of the little known astronomer (the world’s first astrophysicist) George Ellery Hale. He covered the peak of Mount Wilson with a constellation of instruments for observing the sky. His first objective - to study one particular star, our Sun. Hale’s monumental discovery in 1908 – that the Sun generated powerful magnetic fields - has been a source of inspiration for the world’s astronomer's. During his life (born Chicago 1868, died Pasadena 1938) he founded several major observatories and introduced novel telescope designs that saw further and deeper into space. In fact, breakthroughs in astronomy in the first decades of the 20th Century are largely due to Hale’s instruments – he actually built the world’s largest telescope four times. He also established the internationally renowned university known as CalTech and brought scientists from different disciplines together in global co-operative research organisations that still operate today. And the publication he started in the 1890s, the Astrophysical journal, has become the leading forum of its kind – in the world. Science writer, Dava Sobel travels to Mount Wilson in California to marvel at the mind and work of this truly great, modest, pioneering scientist.