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...
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Selected References
Adams, Walter S. (1938). “Francis G. Pease.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 50: 119–121.
Anderson, J. A. (1939). “Francis G. Pease.” Journal of the Optical Society of America 29: 306–307.
Anon. (1938). “Dr. Francis G. Pease.” Nature 141: 542–543.
Anon. (1938). “Obituary.” Observatory 61: 198.
Anon. “Obituary notices.” Los Angeles Times, 8 February 1938, pt. II, pp. 1, 5; and 9 February 1938, pt. II, p. 4.
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.
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 The Edwin Hubble Papers: Previously Unpublished Manuscripts on the Extragalactic Nature of Spiral Nebulae.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.)
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.)
Michelson, A. A. and F. G. Pease (1921). “Measurement of the Diameter of α Orionis with the Interferometer.” Astrophysical Journal 53: 249–259.
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.
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.)
Pease, F. G. (1915). Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 27: 134.
——— (1918). “The Rotation and Radial Velocity of the Central Part of the Andromeda Nebula.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 4: 21–24.
——— (1920). “Photographs of Nebulae with the 60‐Inch Reflector, 1917–1919.” Astrophysical Journal 51: 276–308. (For his observations of M33.)
——— (1928). Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 40: 342. (For a report of his identification of the planetary nebula in M15.)
——— (1930). “The New Fifty‐foot Stellar Interferometer.” Scientific American 143, no. 4: 290–293.
Pendray, G. (1935). Men, Mirrors, and Stars. New York: Funk and Wagnalls Co., pp. 198–220.
Strömberg, Gustav (1938). “Francis G. Pease, 1881–1938.” Popular Astronomy 46: 357–359.
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Hetherington, N.S. (2007). Pease, Francis Gladhelm. In: Hockey, T., et al. The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30400-7_1064
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