Walter Baade Papers: Finding Aid
Finding aid prepared by Huntington Library staff.
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Title: Walter Baade Papers
Date (inclusive): 1915-1960
Collection Number: mssBaade papers
Creator:
Baade, Walter, 1893-1960.
Extent: 22 boxes and one large folder
Repository:
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens
Manuscripts Department
The Huntington Library
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, California 91108
Phone: (626) 405-2203
Fax: (626) 449-5720
Email: reference@huntington.org
URL: http://www.huntington.org
Abstract:
The collection consists of research files and notes related to
the study of supernovae, RR Lyrae stars, star populations, galaxies (including the Andromeda Galaxy),
and various novae
by German-born astronomer Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (1893-1960),
who joined the staff of the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1931. This collection forms part of the Mount Wilson Papers of the
Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
Language: English.
Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services
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The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to
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one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the researcher.
[Identification of item]. Walter Baade Papers, The Huntington Library, San
Marino, California.
Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Deposit, 1988.
Custodial History
The amount of unpublished material Walter Baade left behind was great. This fact was
realized among astronomers, and Jan Oort and Ira Bowen managed to collect his notes
and measurements from Germany and parcel them out to his colleagues who were able to
organize, reduce, and publish the material. Among those at the Mount Wilson and
Palomar Observatories who aided in this were Henrietta Swope, Halton C. Arp, and
Allan Sandage. Some material remains at the Leiden Observatory, but most of it was
sent to Mt. Wilson. The bulk of Baade's papers, which were returned to Pasadena,
were organized by Henrietta Swope and stored in the attic of the Mt. Wilson and
Palomar Observatories office building. Her labels have been retained for the time
being until Baade's papers are more fully catalogued.
Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (he did not often use his first two names) was one of
the most important astronomers of the twentieth century. As an observer at the Mount
Wilson Observatory, he ranks alongside Edwin Hubble in significance. Baade, however,
was an excellent theoretician as well as observer. His interest in the stellar
content of various star systems led him to develop his famous concept of stellar
populations. And his observing skill led to his unexpected resolution of the inner
parts of the Andromeda galaxy into individual stars. His work with the new 200-inch
Hale telescope would eventually lead to a change in contemporary knowledge of the
distances of the galaxies. Though his scientific method resulted in much of his work
being published posthumously, Baade's impact on the development of astronomy was
enormous.
Walter Baade was born on March 24, 1893 at Schröttinghausen in Westphalia,
Germany. His father Konrad, a schoolteacher, and his mother Charlotte, planned for
Walter to pursue a career in theology. From 1903 to 1912 Baade attended the
Friedrichs-Gymnasium in Herford with this end in mind. Over these years, however,
Baade turned away from theology and toward science and mathematics. He attended the
university at Münster from 1912 to 1913 and then continued at Göttingen
until 1919. Baade studied mathematics, physics, and astronomy and spent his last
four years at Göttingen as assistant to the great mathematician, Felix Klein.
His Ph.D. dissertation in 1919 was on the spectrum of the double star, ß
Lyrae.
Upon receiving his degree, Baade went immediately into astronomical work. He obtained
a position as an assistant at the Hamburg Observatory, being in charge of the
40-inch reflecting telescope. His abilities were soon recognized by others and in
1926 he received a Rockefeller International Education Board Fellowship to study in
the United States and Canada. During the next year, Baade spent a great deal of time
at the Harvard College Observatory, the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Yerkes,
Lick, and Mount Wilson. The director of Mt. Wilson, Walter S. Adams, later noted
that Baade's "ability and personal characteristics made a strong appeal to the
members of our staff." Returning to Hamburg in 1927, Baade's responsibilities grew,
and a year later he was offered the position as Chair of Astronomy at Jena, a
position he turned down in order to remain at Hamburg and its better astronomical
facilities. Baade was undoubtedly in line for the directorship at Hamburg, and in
1929 he became a Privatdozent at the University of Hamburg and was placed in charge
of the observatory's eclipse expedition to the Philippines. However, in the opinion
of many at the time, the current director at Hamburg, Richard Schorr, was too
conservative and did not encourage Baade's research into newer and more promising
fields of astrophysics. Instead, Baade had to be responsible for the less glamorous
tasks such as confirming the positions of asteroids and comets. This was the
situation in 1931 when Baade was offered a position as astronomer at the Mount
Wilson Observatory. The Mt. Wilson astronomers realized that Baade was a young man
of marked promise, capable of developing significant research programs. Even though
Baade was reluctant to leave Germany the offer was one which Baade could not refuse
and he joined the Mt. Wilson Observatory in October 1931.
Baade quickly took up his photometric duties, trying to improve and extend the
magnitudes in some of Kapteyn's selected areas. To his credit, however, he soon
realized that the work of Stebbins and Whitford in obtaining accurate photoelectric
magnitudes would be more valuable. As a result, he and Hubble encouraged the two
astronomers to develop their system using the large telescopes on Mt. Wilson.
Baade's main research thrust continued into the field of the stellar content of
various stellar systems: clusters, galaxies, etc. This work would lead him to his
important development of the idea of stellar populations.
After Shapley's 1938 finding of a new type of stellar system, the dwarf elliptical
galaxy, Baade and Hubble worked on resolving these systems into their constituent
stars for the first time. World War II soon intervened, but in a bit of irony
provided Baade with the best opportunity to continue his research. Before the war
began, Baade had taken out papers to become an American citizen. After losing these
papers while moving to a new house, he did not bother to renew his citizenship
efforts. Consequently, when the war broke out Baade was declared an enemy alien and
confined to Pasadena. After some appeals, the Observatory managed to get special
permission for Baade to be at Mt. Wilson after dark in order to do research.
Considering that most of the astronomers at Mt. Wilson were engaged in war work and
that Los Angeles was often in a "brown out" situation to protect coastal shipping,
Baade had plenty of time and darkness with which to use the 100-inch telescope.
Under these conditions, and by using every means at his disposal, Baade achived what
was then considered impossible with the 100-inch telescope: the resolution into
stars of portions of the nucleus of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) and its two
companions. With this accomplished, Baade was able to flesh out his concept of
stellar populations. By the time of the International Astronomical Union's meeting
in Rome in 1952, he was able to show evidence that there were two basic populations
of stars: young, blue stars in dusty galactic regions (Population I) and older,
redder stars in dust free regions (Population II)
When Palomar Mountain's 200-inch telescope was put into operation in 1949, Baade was
there to see if he could delve deeper into the stellar content of the Andromeda
galaxy. Working to the limit of the telescope, Baade failed to discover a particular
class of stars, known as RR Lyrae stars. According to the current knowledge of the
intrinsic brightness of RR Lyrae stars, however, he should have been able to detect
them with the 200-inch telescope. This led Baade to realize that the Andromeda
galaxy was more distant than previously imagined. As a result of Baade's work, the
size of the universe had to be roughly doubled. This result was announced at the
same 1952 Rome meeting mentioned earlier.
Baade was active in many fields of astronomy. One important one was his work to show
that there was indeed a class of novae which were 10,000 times brighter than the
classical novae. His results went far towards proving that these exceptionally
brilliant exploding stars, called supernovae, did exist as a distinct phenomenon.
Baade also studied historical supernovae, eventually discovering the remnant of
Kepler's supernova of 1604 in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Another field of research in which Baade entered was the optical identification of
radio sources. As radio astronomy became more sophisticated, many astronomers began
to chart the exact locations of celestial sources of radio waves. Baade, along with
his colleague Rudolph Minkowski whom Baade had aided in leaving Germany and coming
to Mt. Wilson in 1933, aided greatly in the effort to match these radio sources with
optically visible objects, such as galaxies and supernova remnants.
Baade also continued to occasionally pursue the asteroids, as he did at the Hamburg
Observatory. In 1925 at Hamburg, he discovered Hidalgo (944), an asteroid whose
orbit takes it farther from the Sun than any other known at the time. Then in 1944,
he discovered another unusual minor planet, Icarus (1566), one of a few which
occasionally pass near to the earth.
In 1958, Baade retired from the Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories. Spending some
time at Harvard and the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Australia, he returned to
Germany in 1959 with his wife of thirty years, Johanna "Muschi" Bohlmann, and became
Gauss professor at his old school, Göttingen. On June 25, 1960, while
convalescing after an operation to correct his chronic hip problem, Baade suffered
heart failure and died suddenly.
Before he published any of his work, Baade always insisted on having enough
observational evidence to leave his claims without any doubt. This explains why,
after 1944, Baade published very little. The enormous task which Baade undertook, to
unify stellar astronomy, left him too little time to collect enough evidence to
publish his results before he died. However, Baade did not feel compelled to
publish; he was always in constant contact with the leading astronomers, letting
them know of his ideas and research. Paul Scherer, former executive officer of the
Carnegie Institution of Washington once said, "We all recognize at the Institution
that Baade publishes very little in the journals but we know for a fact that he is
indeed one of the most prolific of our staff members. He 'publishes' his data by
conversations in his office with the world's astronomers." Indeed, Baade's
communication with others was so intense that he rearranged his office hours to
enable him to work at home from 8 P.M. to 2 A.M.
Bibliography
Arp, Halton Christian. "Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade, 1893-1960."
Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada 55 (1961): 113-16.
Dieke, Sally H. "Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade."
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, C. C. Gillispie, ed. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.
Jackson, John. "The President's Address on the Award of the Gold Medal to Dr. Walter Baade."
Monthly Notices of the
Royal Astronomical Society
114 (1954): 370-83.
Sandage, Allan R. "Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade."
Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society 2 (1961): 118-21.
Sandage, Allan R. "Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (1893-1960)."
Year Book of the American Philosohical Society (1960): 108-13.
Wilson, Olin Chaddock. "The Award of the Bruce Gold Medal to Dr. Walter Baade."
Publications of the Astronomical Society of
the Pacific
67 (1955): 56-61.
Scope and Content Note
The collection consists of research files, notes, and correspondence, related to the study of supernovae, RR Lyrae stars,
star populations, galaxies (including the Andromeda Galaxy),
and various novae by German-born astronomer Wilhelm Heinrich Walter Baade (1893-1960), who joined the staff of the Mount Wilson
Observatory in 1931.
This collection forms part of the Mount Wilson Papers of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The collection has not been fully processed and the container list below provides only a broad description of materials in
each box, often based on topics assigned by Henrietta Swope.
Henrietta Swope's list included numbers for the following major headings in the container list below.
Numbers assigned by Henrietta Swope
- Marked photographs of galaxies and clusters of galaxies. Swope's number: 1 (Box 20)
- Charts. Swope's number: 1 (Box 21)
- Miscellaneous charts, graphs, and figures. Swope's number: 2 (Box 20)
- Miscellaneous charts and graphs. Swope's number: 2 (Box 21)
- Miscellaneous work from Germany before 1932. Swope's number: 3 (Box 1)
- Miscellaneous work from Germany before 1932. Swope's number: 3 (Box 15)
- Miscellaneous work from Germany before 1932. Swope's number: 4 (Box 2)
- Cygnus variables work before 1934. Swope's number: 5 (Box 3)
- Globular clusters. Swope's number: 6 (Box 4)
- Extragalactic nebulae. Swope's number: 7 (Box 5)
- Telescope programs & miscellaneous notes. Swope's number: 8 (Box 16)
- Nova Aquilae 1918. Swope's number: 9 (Box 6)
- Novae & Nova Herculis. Swope's number: 10 (Box 7)
- Supernovae. Swope's number: 11 (Box 8)
- Supernovae in galaxies. Swope's number: 12 (Box 9)
- Crab nebula. Swope's number: 13 (Box 10)
- Singer-Polignac Seminar 1939. Swope's number: 14 (Box 10)
- Research Notes on B Cas & A Cas. Swope's number: 15 (Box 11)
- Variables in field around NGC 6522. Swope's number: 16 (Box 12)
- Card file on variables in field around NGC 6522, 1949-50. Swope's number: 17 (Box 11)
- Population I & II; Type I & II Cepheids. Swope's number: 18 (Box 13)
- Figures. Swope's number: 19 (Box 22)
- Chart of expansion of B Cassiopeiae. Swope's number: 20 (Box 22)
- Figures and chart of field of NGC 6522. Swope's number: 21 (Box 22)
- R Aquarii. Swope's number: 22 (Box 17)
- Miscellaneous. Swope's number: 23 (Box 17)
- Notebook on novae. Swope's number: 24 (Box 17)
- Letters after 1945. Swope's number: 25 (Box 19)
- Supernova Ophiuchi 1604. Swope's number: 26 (Box 14)
- Miscellaneous. Swope's number: 27 (Box 14)
- Cygnus variables. Swope's number: 28 (Box 14)
- C. Caratheodory: Geodetic Differential Equations (hand copy). Swope's number: 29 (Box 14)
- Resolution of galaxies M31, 32, NGC205, 147, 185. Swope's number: 30 (Box 18)
- Notes on Population I & II Cepheids 1950-60. Swope's number: 31 (Box 18)
- Lectures. Swope's number: 32 (Box 19)
- Papers for Michigan & IAU, etc. 1950-55. Swope's number: 33 (Box 19)
- Lectures 1950-58. Swope's number: 34 (Box 18)
- Lecture notes. Swope's number: 35 (Box 11)
- "A Discussion of the Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy Based on Plates Obtained by Walter Baade," by van Agt. Swope's number: 36 (Box 19)
- Letters (photocopies) of Baade: to/from F. G. Smith; to B. Lovell, 1951-52 re optical identification of various radio sources. Swope's number: 37 (Box 19)
Related Material
Approximately fifty additional separate collections form the Mount Wilson Papers of
the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and are available for research
in the Huntington Library.
Broadly arranged by subject, with oversize material housed in Boxes 20-22 and an oversize folder.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
Huntington Library's Online
Catalog.
Baade, Walter,
1893-1960.
Carnegie Institution of
Washington.
Mount Wilson
Observatory -- History -- Sources.
Astronomers -- California, Southern --
Archives.
Astronomers -- Correspondence.
Astronomy -- Research.
Galaxies.
RR Lyrae stars.
Stars -- Populations.
Stars, New.
Supernovae.
Andromeda Galaxy.
Notes -- 20th century.
Photographs -- 20th
century.
Research (document genres) -- 20th
century.
Technical reports -- 20th
century.
Carnegie Institution of
Washington.
Box 1
Miscellaneous work from Germany before 1932
This box includes miscellaneous work from Germany before 1932 including ß Lyrae [after 1919]; reports on:
Jena Observatory, Philippine eclipse expedition 1929, Rockefeller IEB Fellowship; letters 1923-1928 including:
Rockefeller Foundation, Jena Observatory, Wolfgang Pauli (1 ltr); variables 1915-1917; Orion Nebula variables (includes letter
from Henrietta Leavitt, 1921);
Nebulosity in Perseus; Color index measurements, Cygnus region; and Cygnus & Sagitta variables.
Box 2
Box 3
Box 4
Globular clusters
Box 5
Extragalactic nebulae
Box 6
Nova Aquilae 1918
Box 7
Novae & Nova Herculis
Box 8
Supernovae
Box 9
Supernovae in galaxies
Box 10
Box 11
Box 12
Variables in field around NGC 6522 (assisted by S. I. Gaposchkin)
Box 13
Box 14
Supernova Ophiuchi 1604, Cygnus variables, C. Caratheodory: Geodetic Differential Equations, and misc. materials
This box includes materials on Supernova Ophiuchi 1604; miscellaneous materials related to:
G. H. Herbig 1949, N. Roman 1950, Diverse notes 1945, Letter to J. H. Oort re Crab nebula polarization,
T Tauri variables, Photo of Orion nebula, SA 51,
L. Perek, High velocity stars 1945 & 1947, NGC 6357 1941, Stebbins colors of supergiants 1942, Miscellaneous notes 1953,
H. Weaver -- galactic rotation 1953, Lists of coordinates by H. C. Arp re variables in NGC 6522, Letter of D. H. Menzel re
Smithsonian Physical Tables 1950,
Leiden list of velocity components of stars more than 5 parsecs, Cepheids with periods between 1 and 2 days, Sun's motion
through spiral arm, and
Distribution of globular clusters in M 87; Cygnus variables; and C. Caratheodory: Geodetic Differential Equations (hand copy).
Box 15
Box 16
Box 17
Box 18
Resolution of galaxies M31, 32, NGC205, 147, 185; Notes on Population I & II Cepheids (1950-1960); Lectures (1950-1958)
This box includes materials related to
Resolution of galaxies M31, 32, NGC205, 147, 185; Mt. Wilson contribution 696 & 697; Notes on Population I & II Cepheids 1950-60;
and lectures from 1950-1958 including:
Dublin IAU 1955, Bruce 1954-55, Darwin, Lecture course at Caltech, Charlottesville 1958, and Russell 1958.
Box 19
Letters after 1945; Papers (1950-1955); "A Discussion of the Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy Based on Plates Obtained by Walter Baade," by van Agt; Letters re optical identification on various radio soruces (1951-1952)
This box includes material related to lectures: Swarthmore 1953, Hitchcock 1954, Harvard 1958-1959;
papers for Michigan and IAU, etc. 1950-55; "A Discussion of the Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy Based on Plates Obtained by Walter
Baade," by van Agt;
and letters (photocopies) of Baade: to/from F. G. Smith; to B. Lovell, 1951-1952 related to optical identification of various
radio sources.
Box 20
Box 21
Box 22
Oversize folder
Large charts related to R Aquarii.