Robert Grant Aitken
1926 Bruce Medalist
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:
A native Californian, Robert Aitken was educated at Williams College in Massachusetts. After teaching briefly in California, he worked at the Lick Observatory from 1895 to 1935. He was associate director seven years (while director W. Wallace Campbell was president of the University of California) and director from 1930 to 1935. Aitken made systematic surveys of binary stars, discovering thousands, measuring their positions visually, and calculating orbits for many. His massive New General Catalogue of Double Stars within 120 degrees of the North Pole allowed orbit determinations which increased astronomers' knowledge of stellar masses. He also measured positions of comets and planetary satellites and computed orbits. He was editor of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (PASP) from 1898 to 1942. He wrote an important book on binary stars, and he lectured and wrote widely for the public.
Presentation of Bruce medal
Benfield, Bernard, PASP 38, 2-14 (1926).
Other awards
French Academy of Sciences, Lalande gold medal, 1906.
Royal Astronomical Society, Gold medal, 1932, presented by H. Knox-Shaw, MNRAS 92, 354-60 (1932).
Some offices held
American Astronomical Society, President, 1937-40.
Astronomical Society of the Pacific, President, 1898, 1915.
Biographical materials
Lang, Harry G., and Bonnie Meath-Lang. Deaf Persons in the Arts and Sciences, a Biographical Dictionary, (Greenwood Press, Westport, CT, 1995), pp.1-3.
Lang, Harry G., Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer, NY, 2007), pp. 21-22.
Plicht, Chris, Aitken, Robert Grant
Tenn, Joseph S., “Robert G. Aitken, the Twenty-First Bruce Medalist,” Mercury 22, 6, 20 (1993).
van den Bos, Willem H., Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Science 32, 1-30 (1958).
Obituaries
Jeffers, Hamilton M., “Robert Grant Aitken, 1864-1951,” PASP 64, 5-10 (1952).
Jeffers, H., R. Trumpler, & W. Wright, In Memoriam, University of California, 1957.
Jonckheere, R., Journal des Observateurs 35, p.25-26 (1952) [in French].
Merrill, Paul W., Griffith Observer 16, 3, 26-28 (March 1952).
Stebbins, Joel, Year Book of the American Philosophical Society, 1951.
Van den Bos, W.H., MNRAS 112, 271-73 (1952).
Portraits
AIP Center for History of Physics
Aitken Family, photo (old age) and drawing (younger)
Named after him
Lunar crater Aitken — the largest impact crater known
Minor Planet #3070 Aitken
Bibliography
Papers
Aitken's papers are at the Mary Lea Shane Archives of Lick Observatory, University of California, Santa Cruz library, which also houses transcripts of interviews of C. Donald Shane and Mary Lea Shane taken by Helen Wright in July 1967. The AIP Niels Bohr Library & Archives has oral interviews of sons Douglas Aitken and Malcolm Aitken, both interviewed by David H. DeVorkin in 1977, and a 1979 interview of Malcolm D. Aitken by Eric Jackson.
Other References: Historical
Search ADS for works about Aitken
Aitken, Robert G., “Recent Progress in Double Star Astronomy: A Review,” PASP 34, 330 (1922).
Aitken, R.G., “The Lick Observatory, Forty Years After,” PASP 40, 151 (1928).
Aitken, Robert G., “Life and Work at Mount Hamilton,” California Monthly 9 (6) 9-12, 39-41 (1935).
Aitken, Robert G., “William Wallace Campbell, 1862-1938,” Science 88, 25 (1938); PASP 50, 204 (1938).
Aitken, Robert G., “February 7, 1889-February 7, 1939 and the Years Between,” PASP 51, 5 (1939). [on the first 50 years of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific].
Aitken, Robert G., “The Story of the Lick Observatory,” Griffith Observer 3, 38 (1939).
Aitken, R.G., “Comments from the Side Lines,“ Popular Astronomy 48, 457-465 (1940) [Address of retiring president of the American Astronomical Society].
Aitken, Robert G., “Early Work on Double Stars at the Lick Observatory,” PASP 57, 138 (1945).
Aitken, Robert G., “Joseph Haines Moore: 1878-1949. A Tribute,” PASP61, 125-28 (1949).
Aitken, Robert G., “The Origin of the A.S.P.,” Griffith Observer 14, 86-93 (1950).
Couteau, Paul, Ces astronomes fous du ciel, ou, L’Histoire de l’observation des etoiles doubles, Edisud, La Calade, Aix-en-Provence,1988).
Curtis, Heber D., “Dean of Double-Star Workers,” The Sky 5, 6, 3 (1941).
Moore, J.H., “Fifty Years of Research at the Lick Observatory,” PASP 50, 189-203 (1938).
Osterbrock, D.E., J. Gustafson, & J. S. Unruh, Eye on the Sky: Lick Observatory’s First Century (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1988).
Tenn, Joseph S., “Keepers of the Double Stars,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 16, 81 (2013).
Other References: Scientific
Search ADS for works by Aitken
Aitken, R.G., “The Definition of the Term Double Star,” Astr. Nach. 188, 281-94 (1911).
Aitken, Robert Grant, Measures of Double Stars Made with the Thirty-six-inch and Twelve-inch Refractors of the Lick Observatory from June, 1895, to December, 1912 (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1914).
Aitken, Robert G., The Binary Stars (Doublas C. McMurtrie, NY, 1918)
Aitken, R.G., “What We Know about Double Stars,” MNRAS 92, 7, 596-610 (1932). [George Darwin Lecture]
Aitken, Robert G., New General Catalogue of Double Stars within 120° of the North Pole (Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington, DC , 1932).
Aitken, Robert G., The Binary Stars (McGraw-Hill, 1935; Dover, 1964)
Aitken, Robert G., “The Outlook for Double Star Astronomy,” Astronomical Journal 52, 32-33 (1946).
Other References: Popularizations, History, etc.
Aitken, R.G., “A Total Eclipse of the Sun,” in The Adolfo Stahl Lectures in Astronomy, Delivered in San Francisco, California, in 1916-17 and 1917-18 (Astronomical Society of the Pacific, San Francisco, 1919), pp. 52-75.
Aitken, Robert G., “Why Popular Interest in Mars?” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1, 3-6 (1925) [Leaflet #2].
Aitken, Robert G., “How Far Away Is That Star, and How Do You Know?” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1, 19-22 (1926) [Leaflet #6].
Aitken, Robert G., “Weighing the Stars,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 1, 85-88 (1929) [Leaflet #21].
Aitken, Robert G., “The Use of Astronomy,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2, 33-36 (1933) [Leaflet #59].
Aitken, Robert G., “Behold the Stars!” in Mason, Frances Baker, ed., The Great Design: Order and Progress in Nature (Macmillan, NY, 1934).
Aitken, Robert G., “Stellar Motions and Stellar Distances,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 2, 165-68 (1936) [Leaflet #92].
Aitken, Robert G., “Driving Back the Dark,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 3, 1-22 (1937) [Leaflet #101].
Aitken, Robert G., “What Time Is It. Please?” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 3, 70-77 (1938) [Leaflet #108].
Aitken, Robert G., “On Observing Double Stars,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 3, 131-38 (1938) [Leaflet #117].
Aitken, Robert G., “New Light on the Stars,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 4, 330-37 (1945) [Leaflet #191].
Aitken, Robert G., “The Discovery of the Planet Neptune,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 5, 88-94 (1946) [Leaflet #211].
Aitken, Robert G., “The Era of the Four Royal Stars,” Leaflets of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 5, 225-33 (1948) [Leaflet #227].
Aitken, Robert G., “Joseph Haines Moore: 1878-1949. A Tribute,” PASP 61, 125-28 (1949).
Aitken, Robert G., “Calendar Reform from an Astronomer’s Viewpoint,” JRASC 46, 89-92 (1952).