Until the 1960s, observational astronomy was not considered a field of interest by the Max Planck Society, whose astrophysical pioneers were strongly oriented toward topics intersecting with the nuclear age. In West Germany, astronomy retained an aura of antiquatedness, and was based largely in observatories dating from previous centuries and still the purview of individual federal states. This changed radically after Sputnik, when astronomy underwent a revival around the world. Even before 1957, an astronomical revolution had been spearheaded by radio astronomy. This was the case also in Germany, where radar pioneers had built the first radio telescopes and forged an international reputation during the first postwar decade. The Max Planck Society, in its moment of most radical expansion, now absorbed these scientists and turned their projects into national infrastructures. This model was then repeated, with the absorption of the most promising observatory project in the traditional optically visible wavelengths, and, simultaneously, a major drive toward space-based astronomy in wavelengths inaccessible from the ground. In all these fields, the Max Planck Society grew by attracting external experts who, in addition to their flagship projects, continued to expand into adjacent wavelengths in subsequent decades, at their respective institutes. This absorption of astronomy led to a significant shift within the Max Planck Society itself, an institution where astrophysics had hitherto been dominated by theoretical plasma physicists in Munich, and experimental nuclear and particle physicists in Heidelberg. The growth of astronomy and its corresponding political influence led to a major reconfiguration of the disciplinary focus of several Max Planck Institutes in the 1970s, and this also signaled a transition from the space sciences of the early post-Sputnik era to the more differentiated astronomy, astrophysics, and planetary sciences of the coming decades.
1 Ground-Based Astronomy
The most significant transformation resulting from Sputnik in the Max Planck Society was the incorporation of observational astronomy as a research field. Up until 1957, there was a strong incipient research tradition in radio astronomy outside the Society. As with the other strong traditions, this one had a powerful political base, in North Rhine-Westphalia in the context of radar development, which reemerged as a dual-use technology after 1955. In the drive to expansion in astronomy, and taking advantage of regional rivalries, the Max Planck Society subsequently also absorbed the fledging project of what would become the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, namely the construction of Germanyâs national optical telescopes, one in each hemisphere. After these two starters, the strategy and narrative of opening new wavelength windows became central to the Societyâs expansion, first internally, at the Institute for Radio Astronomy, and soon through additional directorships at many other institutes.
Post-Sputnik Absorption of Astronomy into the Max Planck Society
In 1957, no observational astronomy was conducted within the Max Planck Society.1 Three decades later, this situation had been completely reversed, as it was felt that the Society meanwhile had a virtual monopoly on research in observational astronomy in West Germany, and, as critics indicated, also absolute control over the âmeans of productionâ in the field.2 Throughout these three decades, observational astronomers transitioned from being complete outsiders to the scientific traditions and organizational culture previously prevailing in the Max Planck Society to becoming central players, constituting a formidable âcoreâ of institutes, scientific members, decision makers, and allied economic and political forces. These observational astronomers came to challenge the political hegemony of the original scientific traditions and factions centered on Wolfgang Gentner in southwestern Germany and Werner Heisenberg in Bavaria.
As mentioned above, national dominance of fundamental research in Germany had been the ambition of the Max Planck Society in the postwar era in many fields, particularly in areas related to nuclear research, such as nuclear reactors and accelerators. But while this aspiration was thwarted in those areas, or at least only partially fulfilled, it was to be realized in full in a field that matured only later, in the post-Sputnik years. As we will see in Chapter 4, the Max Planck Society was so successful in appropriating the cosmic sciences in Germany that, by the end of the 1980s, attempts were being made by researchers and policy makers alike to devolve some of this concentration of scientific power to other organizations.3
As we saw in previous chapters, the Max Planck Societyâs initial move toward outer space was led by a generation for whom the cosmic sciences had emerged out of the nuclear age, methodologically and politically, mainly at institutes such as Astrophysics in Munich, Aeronomy in Lindau, and Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. But in staking the Max Planck Societyâs claim to outer space, the leaders of these institutes then also fostered the absorption of observational astronomy, initially in radio and visible wavelengths. Over the next two decades, however, these new âforeign bodies,â the observational astronomers, rose in prominence, and so were able to play the locals at their own game, on an equal footing; they accordingly gained more power and influence in the Society, and developed their own regional political and industrial support networks, as well as international partnerships, while also repeatedly emphasizing their independence from the old guard of plasma physicists and cosmochemists. Observational astronomy, for example, dominated research by the end of the century, even at the crown jewel of the cosmic sciences in the Max Planck Society, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, as the following chapters show. The book then culminates in the study of how even the two original ânuclearâ institutes in Munich and Heidelberg gradually mobilized their longstanding research traditions over a period of 50 years, to make world-class contributions to the three most innovative approaches to what is now called multi-messenger astronomy.
During the initial wave of expansion treated in this chapter, observational astronomers contributed a set of titans of their own to match Heisenberg and Gentner: for example, Otto Hachenberg and Peter Mezger at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Hans Elsässer at the Max Planck Institute for (Optical) Astronomy in Heidelberg,4 or Klaus Pinkau and Joachim Trümper at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. These actors and their allies were behind many of most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken in West Germany, and were the first ever able to hold their own in international competition, not by cleverly maneuvering their niche expertise in theory or instrumentation within larger collaborations (as had been the approach at the Institutes for Physics and Nuclear Physics), but by the sheer scale of their infrastructural projects and their ambition to become a world superpower in an entire scientific field based on their own observatories and instruments. Eventually, the prime objective was to build the most powerful telescopes in the world at every possible wavelength. The degree to which this and other aims were accomplished will provide a central storyline spanning this chapter and the next one.
Meanwhile, in this first section, we focus on showing how the introduction of astronomy and this ambition to dominate multi-wavelength projects in the 1960s was the first instance of strategic coordination among all the institutes of the Max Planck Society in the cosmic sciences, presenting a clear strategy for growth, as well as demarcating the natural domains of each institute. The expansion of institutes and new directors based on this observational wavelength logic successfully augmented the footprint of observational astronomers both in budget, number of researchers, and scientific members of the Society, leading to their growing influence in its decision-making bodies.5 As will be described in the following chapters, it was only in later decades that contradictions inherent to this wavelength distribution logic came to the surface, as institutes, in expanding, increasingly stepped on each otherâs observational domains.
Finally, we will see how the growth of observational astronomy and its rationale of building national infrastructures benefited from the Cold War era mentality, in which astronomical gigantism was a race of its own among all the major countries, not just the United States and the Soviet Union, but also the United Kingdom, France, and Japan.6 In this race, observatory building often took precedence over the careful designation of scientific goals, so the outcomes varied from spectacular successes to mediocre disappointment, or even disastrous âwhite elephants.â Furthermore, instrumental successes did not always translate into long-lasting scientific returns.
In terms of national dominance, one of the explanations for this effective monopolization is that Max Planck Society members had learned from the mistakes of the past decade, particularly when it came to internal rivalries in the face of nationally significant challenges such as nuclear energy. This lesson had been learned right at the time when âSputnik shockâ impacted the cosmic sciences in the most direct manner possible, as we saw in previous chapters. Moreover, the shift to the space race occurred just as the West German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) was getting into full swing, so that scientific research inspired by Sputnik benefited disproportionately from the new economic prosperity.7 Most importantly, as shown earlier, because the expertise of scientists in Munich, Heidelberg, and, to a lesser degree, Lindau, had been accumulated during a period when astrophysics was the poor manâs entry point to nuclear research, the Max Planck Society found itself with a considerable number of scientific experts in fields related to outer space; and it was their significant influence that would carry weight in decision-making pertaining to the national and international organizations now created to face the new challenges of outer space. As was described in the previous chapter, this privileged position was used to steer space-based research toward the Max Planck Institutes in Munich, Lindau, Heidelberg, and Mainz, as well as to guarantee their leading roles in international collaboration. In addition, the Max Planck Society ended up moving into an activity hitherto unexplored: building astronomical observatories.
Before 1957, there was no interest in observational astronomy in the Max Planck Society, as illustrated in our first chapter by the case of Karl-Otto Kiepenheuerâs solar astronomy institute in Freiburg, which remained an independent institution even beyond the postwar years.8 In traditional optical astronomy, Germany had fallen significantly behind since the early 20th century. Research was still conducted by a decentralized constellation of state and university observatories with long histories, often extending back to the time of independent kingdoms.9 In the postwar era, these observatories continued to be precariously funded by their corresponding federal states.10 Optical astronomers had also been notably conservative in the early years of the 20th century, as is evident, for instance, in the widespread rejection of Einsteinâs theories by many optical astronomers, not only in Germany but also, for example, in the United States.11 Even by purely observational standards, astronomy in Germany was considered to be in decline due to the unfavorable geographical location that combined frequently cloudy skies, too little elevation, and growing light and atmospheric pollution. So much was this the case that, since the 1920s, the best German observational astronomers had begun to migrate to other countries, such as, notably, Walter Baade, âarguably the most influential observational astronomer of the 20th century,â12 who remained permanently at the Mount Wilson observatory, the worldâs largest astronomical facility in the first half of the century.13
Theoretically informed observational astronomy had, however, remained a niche of excellence at a few sites in Germany, at the University of Göttingen, for instance, where Hans Kienle had trained a prominent generation of astronomers, including Heinrich Siedentopf and Otto Heckmann, who even studied relativistic questions.14 Similarly, Albrecht Unsöld, who had obtained his PhD under Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, was a rising star in Kiel from the early 1930s.15 In the postwar era, these were the leading German astronomers, in Tübingen (Siedentopf), Hamburg (Heckmann), and Kiel (Unsöld), before the Max Planck Society had any interest in the field. Consequently, optical astronomy in Germany until the early 1960s was under the auspices of universities and federal states, with modest national funding channeled largely through the German Research Foundation (DFG).16
From these precarious bases, the first postwar generation of astronomers participated in the first attempt at European integration in this field, the European Southern Observatory, which aimed for a joint observational site somewhere on the southern hemisphere with excellent climatic conditions.17
However, Siedentopf died unexpectedly in 1964, and the balance of power in Germanyâs contribution to the European collaboration shifted overwhelmingly northward, toward Heckmann in Hamburg, who was the first director of this European organization, and whose evolution we detail throughout this chapter and Chapter 4. There was growing pressure from rival German astronomers to create a national observatory. As we saw earlier in the book, the discussion of national versus European research had already taken place in the space sciences context, with esro,18 and also with regard to the initiatives that led in 1959 to the creation in Hamburg of the research center German Electron-Synchroton (desy, Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron), the national counterpart to cern.19 The role of observational astronomy in these debates can be considered to be largely derivative, benefiting from the decisions and institutional frameworks that had been established in other fields, to then argue for something similar in optical astronomy. This opened the door to what could be referred to as a German ânationalâ observatory.
In fact, through the next half a century, optical astronomers repeatedly made use of scientific arguments and debates which had previously occurred in other more forward-looking areas such as space exploration, particle physics, and even the other major ground-based observational field of radio astronomy. In Germany, discussion of a national optical observatory only became feasible in the 1960s after the foundations had been laid first by early research initiatives in outer space (possible only because of a national framework originating in the nuclear sciences) and, more directly, by the developments in radio astronomy, which at the time was considered to be more forward-looking, potentially revolutionary, and even more cost-effective.
Radio Astronomy Enters the Max Planck Society
Before 1945, only the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum was available for astronomical study, as it corresponds to the portion of light from outer space that manages to reach the ground through the atmosphere and can be seen with a telescope. Visible-light astronomy limited scientists to studying the Universe in a rather narrow wavelength interval, which is, fortunately, fundamental to observations via optical telescopes because stars, which all have very long lifetimes, emit a large proportion of their electromagnetic energy in the visible waveband.
Radio astronomy was the first of the new astronomies. Radio waves of extraterrestrial origin were discovered by Karl Jansky in the early 1930s but, for many years, this did not have an impact in the community of astronomers. It was not until the period from the late 1940s up to the end of the 1960s, when radio emission was discovered in a wide range of different astronomical objects, that radio astronomy become the true cutting edge of astronomical research.20 This was a field that almost entirely developed as a result of World War II, when radar was developed. In fact, as we will see below, outside of Great Britain, the first postwar radio telescopes were repurposed German radars in the Netherlands and France.21 Moreover, because of postwar restrictions on radar technology, radio astronomy could not be seriously practiced in West Germany during the first postwar decade.22 Nevertheless, brilliant German astronomers such as Heinrich Siedentopf followed the field from the outset, so that whenever these restrictions were lifted, they could easily enter the field.23 More importantly, a new generation of ânativeâ German radio astronomers began to be trained abroad, in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and, later, the United States. In fact, Americans were also very late in entering radio astronomy precisely because they were global leaders in gigantic optical telescopes.24 In the USSR, too, radio astronomy grew out of wartime radar research programs, but, unlike in Europe, Australia, or the United States, Soviet radio astronomy remained largely within military-oriented and tightly controlled laboratories, with severe restrictions on publications in the open scientific literature.25
Like optical and infrared light, radio waves are able to pass through the atmosphere, and have the advantage that observations are not affected by clouds or rain. For these reasons, experts in radio astronomy during the early postwar period tended to be based in cloudy, low-lying European countries, making fast progress in areas unexplored by the Americans. It was not until the late 1950s onwards that Americans made a serious move into radio astronomy, rapidly building some of the worldâs largest instruments. This late move brought in its wake new institutional modalities adapted for the larger scale of this new generation of instruments; prior to this, American research was virtually impossible at a national level, and most observatories were owned by states, or privately owned. During the Cold War, it became increasingly urgent to fund scientific infrastructures on a national scale, and in astronomy, this resulted in a National Radio Astronomical Observatory (nrao) in Green Bank, West Virginia26 and, later, a National Optical Astronomy Observatory (noao) at the top of Kitt Peak, Arizona.27
West Germany, which was experiencing similar organizational problems because of scientific research having originally been the responsibility of each individual federal state, could look to the American national observatories as a model to follow in the 1960s. Several of the leading West German radio astronomers spent a part of their career at Green Bank, including Sebastian von Hoerner, who had been von Weizsäckerâs student in Göttingen (Chapter 1), and, later, Peter Mezger, who had a doctorate in engineering from the Technical University Munich, obtained during his work with early German radars and radio telescopes, and had also trained in the Paris Observatory with captured German radars. As of the mid-1950s, German universities began to build their own radio telescopes, most notably in Kiel (Albrecht Unsöld), Tübingen (Heinrich Siedentopf), and Bonn (Friedrich Becker). In 1956, for example, still before Sputnik, Bonn had already constructed a magnificent 25 m-diameter radio telescope, the Stockert radio telescope or Astropeiler.28 Simultaneously, in East Berlin, Otto Hachenberg was building the largest radio telescope antenna in the German-speaking world, a 36 m device completed in 1958.29
A Third Regional Pole in North Rhine-Westphalia
As we already saw in the case of Bavaria and of southwestern Germany as a whole, regional interests played a major role in shaping the early decades of the Max Planck Society. Next, we will describe how this unfolded in the northwestern state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), which was at the time the most densely populated and industrialized part of West Germany. Due to historical peculiarities of Imperial Germany and the Weimar era, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society had been present there mainly through the heavily industrially based Institute for Coal Research and Institute for Iron Research.30 This trend continued throughout the first postwar decade, when, although it was part of the British zone, the region did not add significant new institutes to the Max Planck Society. When, in the late 1950s, the final agreement was reached between Federal Germany and its constituent states on their joint support of the new national institutes (both those of the Max Planck Society and a number of other major centers of research), the fact that North Rhine-Westphalia had been neglected was already a source of complaint, particularly in light of the immense resources it brought to these national bodies.31 In the nascent West German federal system, Bavaria, one of the poorest states before 1945, had managed both to attract industries from the zone then under Soviet control and, through its conservative Christian Social Union party (CSU), to gain disproportionate influence at national level, also in scientific affairs, through the Federal Ministry for Nuclear Affairs. As described in earlier chapters, this led to a strategy to locate as many nationally funded research institutions as possible in Bavaria, which thus became a net recipient of federal funds.
At the other end of the spectrum was North Rhine-Westphalia, the largest net federal contributor, yet which in the early postwar decades saw all other federal states block its attempts to capture its fair share of national projects, the best illustration of which is that the first federally funded nuclear reactor ended up being built outside of NRW, in Karlsruhe. Even more so than Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia had striven for national dominance in new technological areas, but the new federal structure of the country was deliberately designed to counterbalance this. The solution in the case of such a powerful state was to develop large state-funded projects in parallel with the federal initiatives. The first notable example of this was a response to the aforementioned construction of the first German nuclear reactor. While Heisenbergâs initial intention to build it in Bavaria was overwhelmed by non-Bavarian interests, in which the Rhinelander Konrad Adenauer played a direct role, the reactor was not constructed in North Rhine-Westphalia, but rather, as said, near Karlsruhe, on the upper Rhine.32 North Rhine-Westphaliaâs response was to build, almost at the same time, its own nuclear research reactors at the Kernforschungsanlage Jülich, a research center directly inspired by the main British atomic research center at Harwell.33 For the next half century, Jülich continued to operate in parallel with Karlsruhe.
By the mid-1950s, even before Sputnik, the federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia began to place a particular emphasis on developing industries that facilitated its dominance in radio astronomy. Making radio telescopes in the first two postwar decades was primarily a construction challenge: large structures to create a static or, preferably, movable dish, coupled with the development of the electronic technology used for signal detectors. Both kinds of expertise were favored in what was then Germanyâs most industrialized state. Following a first generation of astronomical radio telescopes, there was also an explicit direct interest in the technological applications of dish antennas for communications as well as for the military. In early 1957, the Forschungsinstitut für Hochfrequenzphysik (Research Institute for High Frequency Physics) was created in North Rhine-Westphalia to develop these applications, largely supported by the company Telefunken, and sharing the same technology with the radio telescopes of the University of Bonn. In fact, when it was completed, the Stockert radio telescope operated to 50 percent as a radio telescope, and to 50 percent as an experimental radar for the applied research institute. The astronomer Wolfgang Priester was brought from Kiel to lead the research activities, and it was in this world of the Stockert antenna that Peter Mezger, one of the future Max Planck Institute directors, gained his expertise prior to his period abroad at Green Bank in the United States.34
Meanwhile, in East Berlin, in the late 1950s, Otto Hachenberg began to consider moving to the West, and a position was found for him in Bonn, where he arrived in 1961 shortly after the Berlin Wall was built.35 In less than a decade, North Rhine-Westphalia had thus created the conditions for a third major focal point of political, industrial, and scientific interests converging in the cosmic sciences, thanks to a specific technical expertise, in this case, large antenna construction.
Leo Brandt and the Distinctive Engineering Tradition of Radio Astronomy in Bonn
It so happens that in North Rhine-Westphalia, the person who led the stateâs efforts to maintain supremacy in scientific and technological matters was one of the founders of radio astronomy, Leo Brandt. He, more than anyone, shaped the distinctive research tradition of the future Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. As we will see, what distinguishes the people in Bonn is the preeminence of engineers, who played a very direct role in the design of their instruments, including many of the worldâs largest radio astronomical antennas. This engineering ethos was strongly reinforced by its close connection with powerful industrial and political interests in North Rhine-Westphalia, a political-scientific infrastructure shaped by Leo Brandt in the first two postwar decades.
Leo Brandt was born to a traditional family of social democrats, and came of age around the time of the rise of National Socialism. His political convictions constrained his work to private industry in the Nazi era, where he worked as a telecommunications engineer at Telefunken in the 1930s. Then, in the war, he was one of the key figures in the development of radar technology in Germany, including the famous Würzburg radars that would soon serve as the first generation of radio telescopes in the formerly occupied countries of Western Europe. Unlike many other key technical experts, Brandt did not move abroad after the war; instead, at a very early stage, he made a career for himself as defender of the interests of the new state of North Rhine-Westphalia, also becoming one of West Germanyâs most influential utopians of technocratic modernity.36
In the first postwar decade, under the protection of his friend, the left-wing cdu Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, Karl Arnold, Brandt maneuvered himself upward, from being in charge of the stateâs transportation network to the position of Secretary of State for Scientific Research, a role created especially for him and unique among the federal states. Throughout this decade, he denounced the Allied restrictions on research in fields such as atomic power and radar as serious impediments to Germanyâs path to modernity; and although his position actually required him to enforce these restrictions in NRW, he deliberately skirted them in order to facilitate research in many fields that would otherwise have been adversely affected.37 While his persona was strongly connected to a technocratic brand of social democracy, Brandt remained a personal friend of Abraham Esau, for example, who had been in charge of both the nuclear and radar projects during the war, as plenipotentiary for nuclear physics within the Research Council of the Education Ministry. Brandt defended Esau during the postwar trials, in contrast to most scientific researchers who worked under him and who characterized him as a loyal participant in the Nazi apparatus.38
By the mid-1950s, Brandt had established an approach in North Rhine-Westphalia that consisted in attempting to capture as many prewar industries and research institutions moving from other parts of occupied Germany, and when this did not succeed, to create parallel entities in all the crucial scientific-technical fields. In addition to his work in radar/radio astronomy, which will be discussed in detail, he established a cyclotron and a computing center in Bonn, and relocated to North Rhine-Westphalia the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (dvl), one of the precursors of the future federal aerospace agency (DLR). Most famously, Leo Brandt was the mastermind behind the nuclear research facility at Jülich, mentioned above, a direct response to the location of the national research reactor in Karlsruhe. By the early 1960s, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia counted over 40 different state-supported institutes for scientific research in its Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Forschung (Association for Research) led by Brandt.39
Brandtâs technocratic utopianism led him from radar to nuclear energy in the first postwar decade, but he was the reason that radio astronomy established itself primarily in Bonn over other competing sites in West Germany with stronger prewar traditions in astronomy, such as Kiel or Tübingen, which also both expressed an early interest in radio astronomy. Brandt did not go directly into radio astronomical research but instead supported the postwar career of Friedrich Becker as director of the university observatory in Bonn, the relocation of Wolfgang Priester from Kiel to Bonn, and most importantly, Otto Hachenbergâs move from East Berlin to Bonn. This had been planned since the late 1950s, facilitated by their acquaintance during the war, when Hachenberg had shifted his career from astronomy to airplane radar development.40 In the first postwar decade, it was an open secret that radio astronomy in North Rhine-Westphalia was a way to keep a foot in the door of radar technology. This is best expressed by the Stockert Astropeiler itself (an active radar built on a hill and mounted on a tall tower to have access to the horizon), which was deliberately constructed for a dual purpose: yet, while training a valuable first generation of German radio astronomers, it did not initially generate much scientific interest, functioning primarily as an experimental radar development site.41
Capturing Radio Astronomy for the Max Planck Society: Otto Hachenberg and Sebastian von Hoerner
How much a regional pole of support mattered in building scientific infrastructures quickly became apparent with the German project to construct the worldâs largest fully steerable radio telescope. By the early 1960s, a technological limit to the size of moveable radio telescopes had been reached because of the deformation that occurs in the parabolic dish antenna due to its own weight. Suddenly, a deeper level of theoretically informed design was needed. Sebastian von Hoerner, then in Green Bank, proposed a solution with his homologous antenna concept, in which the deformation occurring in the antenna is such that the perfect parabolic shape is maintained regardless of orientation.42 Sebastian von Hoerner then became the candidate to replace Heinrich Siedentopf in Tübingen, who had unexpectedly passed away in 1964, and at the same time as he was invited to teach in Tübingen, he made a proposal to build the worldâs largest fully steerable radio telescope (160 m) based on his homologous design.43
In many ways, von Hoerner had a distinct profile shaped by his time in Göttingen as a student of von Weizsäckerâs.44 While always interested in astronomy and astrophysics, in Göttingen he developed an eminently theoretical expertise which combined a brilliant theoretical outlook with the use of the new calculating machines built by Billingâs group, such as the G2 (see Chapter 1).45 Von Hoerner then moved to his native Heidelberg for a short time, where he worked with Walter Fricke at the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (Ari, Astronomical Calculation Institute) on the first N-body simulations of star clusters and obtained his Habilitation (post-doctoral teaching qualification) in 1959, with a thesis on the rate of star formation.46
In 1962, he was summoned to the National Radio Astronomical Observatory in Green Bank by its first director, the veteran optical astronomer Otto Struve. Von Hoerner was key to the success of Green Bank, which had very problematic early years characterized by poorly designed antenna constructions due to their excessively empirical engineering. Von Hoerner became an expert in the theoretical foundations of antenna structures, crucial for the scaling up of radio telescopes from a postwar diameter of tens of meters, to the entirely new terrain around the hundreds-of-meters mark. His approach was eminently theoretical, working out simple designs from first physical principles to build antennas that had never been attempted before. This was completely unlike the contemporary approaches of the generation of engineers who had constructed radio telescopes to date.47 And, crucially, this absolute control of telescope design was also very new in astronomy: as we will see later, in optical astronomy, a separation between telescope makers and users persisted for much longer, so that the leading optical astronomers were rarely involved in key instrumental innovations themselves, with these often coming instead from industry or even amateurs. In radio astronomy, on the other hand, the leading radio astronomers were experts on either antenna construction or the electronics needed for their detectors.48
The appointment of von Hoerner in Tübingen and the construction of his 160 m radio telescope were likely to make Germany (and Tübingen) a world leader in astronomy, and so it was expected that the Volkswagen Foundation would donate resources for the latter. These plans, however, were in direct competition with those of North Rhine-Westphalia for radio astronomy in the state, led at the time by the recently immigrated Hachenberg. He quickly made a counterproposal to the Volkswagen Foundation for his own more traditional and smaller 80 m telescope.49 The ensuing clash between these projects highlighted the need to establish a national framework for building large astronomical facilities in West Germany, in light of the competition between different regions and scientific researchers. The two competing projects for the worldâs largest radio telescope forced West German science organizers at the recently created Federal Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat, see Chapter 2) to deliberate on the best framework for German national observatories, something that up to that point was nonexistent in astronomy. Given the very strong presence of Max Planck Society members and allies in this advisory body, and their closeness to both von Hoerner and Hachenberg, this seemed an ideal opportunity to enact the most radical expansion of the cosmic sciences within the Max Planck Society: turning the Max Planck Society into the vehicle for Germanyâs ânationalâ observatory projects, first in radio astronomy and, a few years later, in optical astronomy. This was a major departure from the outcome of discussions regarding the last wave of national facilities, namely the creation of desy and the Institute for Plasma Physics as independent private organizations outside of the Max Planck Society. Nevertheless, within this ânationalâ framework, regional interests continued to dominate, and what was first viewed as a balanced solution to competition between von Hoerner and Hachenberg (and Baden-Württemberg versus North Rhine-Westphalia) took a definite turn in favor of the latter. Initially, the plans called for two large antennas to be created, one for Bonn and one for Tübingen, under a single Max Planck Institute distributed between the two sites.50
It soon became obvious, however, that the political pendulum would swing in the direction of Bonn under the direct influence of Leo Brandt, who put pressure on the Volkswagen Foundation to insist that all the infrastructure should be installed in North Rhine-Westphalia,51 which in turn put strong pressure on the Max Planck Society to base the institute in Bonn, as few Max Planck Institutes were based in NRW at the time, or even exceedingly few, relative to the financial contributions made by what was then West Germanyâs most industrialized and populous state.52 The situation thus turned against von Hoerner, who was now increasingly expected to share a single radio telescope based on his principles but located in the rival federal state and controlled by Hachenberg. Instead of taking up his position in Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg, he remained in Green Bank for the rest of his scientific career.53
Over the next half decade, up until 1973, the Effelsberg radio telescope was built, becoming the first postwar case in which Germans controlled the worldâs most powerful scientific instrument in the cosmic sciences, and it was the showpiece of an industrial-scientific partnership that was expected to continue building the largest radio telescopes in the world for the next generation, while consolidating the dominance of North Rhine-Westphalia in the field. The actual telescope that was built was initially to be constructed by Krupp using a simplified, approximate version of von Hoernerâs homology design. Ultimately, however, the telescope was built by a consortium: Krupp collaborated with the mechanical engineering company man (Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg), whose Gustavsburg branch in Wiesbaden was one of the most important builders of large structures in West Germany. When the Effelsberg radio telescope went into production, man had just completed construction of the Parkes Radio Telescope in Australia, one of the main inspirations for the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy. Although man had not designed the Parkes, its expertise in the construction of large antennas was recruited for the consortium, leading to collaboration of the two industrial companies that built not only all of Germanyâs large radio telescopes but also the vast majority of its large communications antennas and military-related dishes.54
Like Effelsberg, all subsequent Max Planck Society radio telescopes were financed by private donations from the Volkswagen and Krupp Foundations, and constructed by the man/Krupp consortium, whose successor to this day ranks among the major antenna-building companies in the world, VERTEX Antennentechnik, owned by one of the worldâs largest global defense conglomerates.
The appointment of Hachenberg over von Hoerner also reinforced a distinct research tradition in Bonn built around an engineering ethos, as opposed to the more theoretical inclinations of the Göttingen tradition that von Hoerner was part of. Within the recently established framework of collegiate directorship for Max Planck institutes (see Chapters 1, 3, and 4), the Bonn institute was expected to have three equal directors, and those selected (Otto Hachenberg, Peter Mezger, and Richard Wielebinski) were both closer to the engineering tradition than von Hoerner would have been. The first addition, who would quickly overshadow Hachenberg himself to become one of the most powerful figures in the Max Planck Society, was Peter Mezger, who, as was mentioned above, started out as an engineer in Munich and was an apprentice in radio astronomy in France in the postwar years.
After intermittent employment with Siemens, Mezger was also recruited to work at Green Bank where, in the course of the 1960s, a whole contingent of Germans had been established, initially aided by the appointment of the emigreÌ optical astronomer Otto Struve as its first director, the reason why von Hoerner had been offered a position there in the first place. In Green Bank, Mezger specialized in the detectors and antenna construction for increasingly shorter radio wavelengths: while the first generation of postwar radio telescopes worked in a range of wavelengths of tens of centimeters, Mezger was part of a new generation working on wavelengths under one centimeter, which require much more precise reflective surfaces, distinct detectors, and much higher, clearer geographical locations than the first generation of radio telescopes.55
To complete the triumvirate in Bonn, there came the appointment of Richard Wielebinski, an engineer from an eÌmigreÌ Polish family settled in Australia. Wielebinski, the electronic detector engineer recruited from the Parkes telescope, was one of the highest profile âforeignâ directors hired by the Max Planck Society to date, and over the next ten years he became the one who would lead Effelsberg to decades of scientific productivity.56
It will be described later how Bonn also showcased conflicts brought about by the collegiate directorship of Max Planck Institutes, particularly when appointees were of the old guard generations who came of age before the war. Regardless of these conflicts, however, the directors in Bonn shared an engineering tradition focused on building many of the best, most innovative radio telescopes in the world, in clear contrast to the more theoretically embedded tradition from Göttingen/Munich and the experimental physics tradition of Germanyâs southwest.
Not only was the construction of Effelsberg a unique opportunity for the Max Planck Society to achieve world leadership in a scientific field, it also paved the way to an immense observational astronomy program that ended up accounting for most of the work at three of its largest Max Planck Institutes. Once the field of observational astronomy had gained recognition in the Society as a desirable scientific pursuit, and the organization had secured its status by running national projects, several other projects soon followed.
Optical Astronomy in Baden-Württemberg and at the European Southern Observatory
In optical astronomy, Hans Elsässer, a disciple of Siedentopfâs who had been appointed head of the Königstuhl observatory in Heidelberg in 1962, negotiated the founding of a Max Planck Institute for Optical Astronomy, and the creation, following the Effelsberg model, of the first major German optical observatories located in favorable geographical locations in the northern and southern hemisphere.57 Elsässerâs meteoric rise, marked by his appointment in Heidelberg, was powered also by his authorship of the optical astronomy section of the memorandum on the future of astronomy, in which he had argued for the construction of large national telescopes.58 This memorandum itself rode on the back of Sputnik, and was published a few years after a similar memorandum had established the research program for the space sciences.59 In the early 1960s, Elsässer was also the representative of astronomers on the committees for space research initiated by the West German government.60
Unlike the privately funded radio telescopes, support in the case of optical astronomy came directly from the federal ministry; but the optical observatory project was executed by the same man/Krupp consortium behind the radio telescopes, with the Zeiss optical company in nearby Oberkochen in charge of the telescopes themselves.61 As we saw earlier, Baden-Württemberg had been the site foreseen for the section of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy that would have been headed by von Hoerner in Tübingen, had Hachenberg and Bonn not come to dominate the project. Now Hans Elsässer was evening the score in this regional rivalry.
The foundational idea for the institute was to build two identical large telescopes of around 2.2 m in diameter, to be located at sites on the northern and southern hemisphere. Then, a third, gigantic telescope with a diameter of around 3.5 m (initially 4 m), to compete with the worldâs largest, would be housed in one of the observatories. The initial proposals hinted at a southern location for the giant telescope, where it would be competing directly with the esoâs. However, during the early planning phases, expert committees decided, against Elsässerâs wishes, to locate it in the northern hemisphere, in order to reduce the construction and operational costs, to speed up its completion, and so it would serve as a complement to eso. The chosen site was in Spain (still under the Franco dictatorship), in the southern province of AlmerıÌa. The southern hemisphere observatory was to be located on the former colonial territory of German Southwest Africa, now Namibia, where observational conditions were better. The potentially problematic selection of this host country (then under South African rule) was not a consideration for Elsässer, who defended his choice based on what he felt were exclusively scientific criteria, in his view in contrast to eso, which he thought had moved to Chile due to the interference of political considerations in scientific ones.62 In the early 1970s, during the period of political instability between the Allende presidency and the beginnings of the military dictatorship, Elsässer appeared to have made the better choice. He was well aware of the political difficulties experienced by astronomers in Chile in the early 1970s that further justified the choice of an Africa location.
However, as will be seen repeatedly throughout this book, the Spanish observatory and its large telescopes are considered to be one of the largest completed failures of the Max Planck Society, while the second observatory planned for the southern hemisphere did not even come to fruition, and its telescope was eventually installed by eso in Chile, as we describe later in this chapter and the next. What saved the scientific reputation of the Heidelberg institute, during the decades of observatory construction and subsequent disappointing scientific output, was the department or division of airborne and space-based infrared astronomy, which we discuss in more detail in Chapter 4. Elsässer himself had conducted his early scientific career in high-altitude astronomy on alpine stations, and this work favored the establishment in Heidelberg of a Department for Infrared Astronomy, which was directed by Dietrich Lemke and obtained funding of its own separately from the ministryâs space science budget. At some point, it was attempted to turn it into an independent sub-institute under the name of âExtraterrestrial Astronomy,â but such new sub-institutes were by then no longer standard Max Planck Society practice.63 In any case, scientifically, this department remained relatively unaffected by the instituteâs observatory-building difficulties. As will be explained in Chapter 4, if anything, the main problem of this space research team based in Heidelberg was its competition with work carried out at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and Heidelberg was quite successful here, as the Garching institute struggled for many years with its own attempts at a division of infrared astronomy.64
German Industrial Partnerships vs the ESO In-House Approach at CERN
With the astronomical institutes in Bonn and Heidelberg, a âbusiness modelâ in German national astronomical projects began to emerge, part of the reasoning behind which was to help national industries in technological fields develop products that could later be offered on a wider global scale, in this case, telescopes; and attempts were made in the late 1970s and 1980s to sell to third countries replicas of both radio and optical telescopes originally designed for the Max Planck Society. This even came to be encouraged by the Max Planck Society in the 1970s, when institute mentors encouraged directors to commercialize their telescopes and observatories, placing a clause in the industrial contracts stating that the development costs of the instruments would be refunded if a second buyer was found. This eventually happened with the Iraqi National Observatory.65
One of the most enduring developments to come out of this partnership approach was the development of the glass-ceramic material Zerodur®, with which the telescope mirrors were made. Despite the disappointments of Calar Alto, and even the failure of Zeiss itself, which has now abandoned large telescope construction, the material, developed by the West German offshoot of Schott Mainz, continues to be used today for the worldâs largest optical and space-based telescopes, now led by international organizations. But the most profitable uses by far of this material are now non-astronomical, in microelectronic components requiring temperature stability.66
These attempts at a national optical observatory in Germany ran in parallel with the establishment of the European Southern Observatory which, as mentioned above, was modeled on cern around the common need for an observation site in the southern hemisphere. On the German side, two significant astronomers participated in the early years of eso: Heinrich Siedentopf in Tübingen and Otto Heckmann in Hamburg. Heckmann was in fact the first German to act as director of an international scientific organization, although its scale during his directorship was very small and his initial role involved little more than setting up meetings between representatives of the contributing countries.67 Heckmann himself was a somewhat problematic choice of director because, while a brilliant astronomer who had, for example, defended general relativity against more ideological scientists during the Nazi era, he was also seen to have generally collaborated with this regime.68 He carried this reputation into the postwar era, and it was only with the intervention of American interests that all the European partners came to overcome their dislike of Heckmann and set up the organization.69
Nevertheless, in its first decade, it was a very loose institution deliberately kept small and decentralized by the constituent countries, which wanted to keep it largely as administrator of the astronomical sites where member countries would each install and control their own observatories.70 For the first period, the major consideration was the selection of this site, which shifted from South Africa to Chile in consideration of both quality of the skies and the impending political isolation of the apartheid regime.71 While these sites were being evaluated and comparisons made between South Africa and Chile (in which Hans Elsässer himself participated), Siedentopf, Elsässerâs mentor, passed away. After this, Heckmann and Elsässer became adversaries, one in charge of a European project, the other of its national counterpart. For example, when consulted about a national observatory, or a Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heckmann deemed it unnecessary.72
Heckmann was instrumental in the choice of Chile which, as we will see later, turned out to be the most valuable asset for eso. On the other hand, during the next phase of the organization, namely the venture to build a large telescope jointly with all member states, Heckmann failed as a result of attempting to concentrate all telescope manufacture using a local company in Hamburg. By the late 1960s, this led to Heckmann being ousted as director general of eso, to be replaced by Adrian Blaauw from the Netherlands, who had been âpart-timeâ scientific director in the period 1968â69.73
Blaauw, who had a very close relationship to cern, made the next crucial decision that would set Eso apart from its competitors. In an attempt to save the large telescope project, he created the Telescope Project Division on the Cern campus in Geneva, under an eso-cern cooperation agreement, and moved its manufacture directly to cern, where teams also working on the latest particle accelerator, the Super Proton Synchrotron (sps), brought modern project management and manufacturing techniques to esoâs telescope, a relatively minor task for them.74 The telescope was finished very quickly, on schedule and within budget, and, furthermore, it proved more innovative than what was offered by established industrial manufacturers.75 Following the practice of cern, instrument development was done in-house, and only when the specifications and instrumental design were ready were these contracted out to manufacturers. This was, for example, the opposite of the standard procedure of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, which contracted its three large telescopes out to Zeiss without much interest in a close co-development of the devices.76
The different approaches taken by eso and the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg resulted in the formerâs similarly sized large telescope being completed almost a decade earlier (1977 compared to 1986), while both initiatives had begun around the same time. By the time the large Calar Alto telescope started operations, eso was finishing its much more innovative New Technology Telescope (ntt), which made the Max Planck telescope embarrassingly out of date in comparison.77
esoâs period in cern, however, could not be permanent, as Germany insisted that it should remain the headquarters of the organization.78 Because of Elsässerâs rivalry with this organization,79 the site considered for the headquarters was not Heidelberg, but rather Garching, where, as we will see in the next chapter, eso worked much more closely with the Max Planck Institutes for Extraterrestrial Physics and for Astrophysics.80
Inter-institute Coordination and the Role of Institute âMentorsâ
The observatory institutes in Bonn and Heidelberg were fiercely independent within the Max Planck Society as well as from each other, as they both obtained external funding for their very expensive observatories, either through private donations (Bonn), or federal government funding (Heidelberg).81 They also represented very different research traditions and distinct international partners. They even inherited the international rivalry between optical astronomers and radio astronomers. Despite all this, they shared a distinct philosophy of observational astronomy that gave precedence to general-purpose instrument construction over the close coupling of instruments and experiments with theoretical questions, in contrast to what had been the case in older traditions of the Max Planck Society in Heidelberg and Munich. After all, at the time, many discoveries in astronomy (particularly those related to radio astronomy) continued to be determined by the race toward new instruments coupled with sheer luck.82
In addition to this epistemological proximity, both institutes shared one feature of the Max Planck Society which would become central in their first decades of activities: the figure of Günther Preiss as intermediary between the institutes and the president of the Society. One of the key characteristics during the presidency of Butenandt (see Chapter 1) was the Societyâs increasing monopoly on the relationships between its institutes and the âoutside world,â and these interactions were carefully managed at the highest level by the Institutsbetreuer, who acted as supervisors and liaison officers between the General Administration and the institutes.83
Throughout the most intense infrastructure-building period of the observatory institutes, Preiss was the link between directors and researchers at these institutes, with the interests, pressures, and influences coming from the presidency, the federal ministries involved, industrial partners, and financial supporters. Most salient among these were the interests from the 1960s to the 1980s in consolidating the industrial partnership between Krupp and Man, which ultimately built most of their observatories, as well as the eiscat (European Incoherent Scatter Scientific Association) installations for the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy.84 Preiss personally navigated the minefield of industrial contracts and international negotiations related to the first major presence of the Max Planck Society outside of Germany, with two observatories in Spain and one in Southwest Africa, as well as later in Arizona. The available primary sources and interviews indicate that in both Bonn and Heidelberg the instituteâs âmentorâ Preiss was seen as an ally in finding compromises between their point of view and these outside forces.85 Similarly, in the 1970s, Preiss would be crucial in setting up the gallex international collaboration at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, which included a major donation by the Krupp Foundation, described in detail in Chapter 5.86
2 High-Energy Space-Based Astronomy
By the mid-1960s, there were initial attempts, internationally, to base astronomical observatories directly in outer space, a decades-old dream, as many wavelengths are blocked by the atmosphere even at mountain altitudes. This section follows the transition of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, from an early nuclear era focused on near-Earth space plasma experiments to the institutionâs increasing dedication to space astronomy. As with the ground-based astronomers, Max Planck leaders invited external pioneers in the field to become directors and participated in several revolutionary astronomical satellites in the gamma-ray and X-ray domains. Space-based astronomy was embedded in European collaboration as well as in competition with the United States. These satellite observatories then guaranteed further Germanâand hence Max Planck scientistsââparticipation in all the major missions in these fields, in Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union. High-energy space-based astronomers differed significantly from their ground-based colleagues, having come from a tradition of experimental particle physics, and their appointment further shifted the center of gravity away from the plasma astrophysicists of previous decades.
Early Interest in Satellites at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics: Gamma-Ray Astronomy
From the late 1950s, Bruno Rossi and his collaborators at mitâa group which had played a leading role in cosmic ray research since the early postwar yearsâwere leaping into the dimension of space with visionary and challenging ideas about detecting cosmic gamma rays and X-rays from extrasolar sources, pioneering the birth of these new branches of astronomy. In 1961, the Explorer XI satellite carried into Earthâs orbit the first gamma ray telescope built by MIT scientists William L. Kraushaar and George W. Clark.87 In fall 1959, Rossi had also initiated a project for the detection of X-rays of extrasolar origin at American Science & Engineering (as&e), a manufacturer of advanced X-ray equipment and related technologies, also specialized in detection of X-rays from bomb tests.88 This project led to the unexpected discovery in June 1962 of Scorpius X-1, an object that emitted a thousand times more X-rays than the Sun, demonstrating the existence of a new class of stellar objects in which unknown physical processes were taking place.89 Space research was opening new spectral regions as well as new regions of space to scientific investigation. The emergence of these new fields, requiring detection techniques drawn from experimental physics, was opening the domain of (high-energy) astrophysical research to cosmic ray physicists. From the early 1960s, increasingly sophisticated gamma ray space missions and satellites began to operate, and competing in this field became one of esroâs main objectives.90 As described in the previous chapter, this organization, the European Space Research Organization founded in 1964 by ten European nations and promoted by Edoardo Amaldi and Pierre Auger, was based on the successful model of cern, among the main founding fathers of which Amaldi and Auger had numbered.91
In fall 1961, when a Department of Extraterrestrial Physics had just been established in the Max Planck Institute for Physics, Reimar Lüst was visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,92 where he had an opportunity to follow, in person, the pioneering attempts taking place there, in the field of gamma and X-ray astronomy. At the time, Rossiâs group was also preparing a further groundbreaking experiment devised to explore the conditions of near-Earth space plasmas and the EarthâSun relation. The Earth-orbital satellite Explorer X launched in March 1961 was instrumented with two fluxgate magnetometers and the MIT plasma probe, which measured a steady flux of protons in the space around the Earthâs magnetosphere and established the existence of a geomagnetic cavity, a region of space surrounding the Earth, which is shielded from the solar wind by the Earthâs magnetic field.93 These early measurements prepared the ground for the complete vindication of Eugene Parkerâs theory of the solar wind, having some of its main roots in Biermannâs hypothesis based on the study of comet tails (see Chapters 1 and 2). On the basis of the experience gained in 1962 from a recent six-month stay at mit and at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Lüst suggested that no further time should be lost. Other countries, as well as other groups in the US, were entering the field. The Max Planck Society would be a particularly suitable framework for contributing to space activities with fundamental research in the broadest sense of the term.94 The recent US results could be used as a source of information on plasmas and magnetic fields in the nearby interplanetary space for planning new space experiments, and this actually became a main activity at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, which was actually established in May 1963, transforming Lüstâs department into a sub-institute of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics.
The advent of the space age had been instrumental in accelerating the process of making astrophysics a respectable branch of physics. What Lüst had experienced in the US, in particular at mit, was seeing new realms such as space science and gamma- and X-ray astronomy opened up by physicistsâoften migrating from cosmic ray physicsâwho were able to build their own optical and electronic devices for research, setting the stage on which astronomy would eventually approach the scale of high-energy physics. With its deep roots in the Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in Munich, the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physicsâ strength lay both in theory and in the special skills and techniques typical of physicists.95 In the period 1963â65, Lüst began to make plans to launch space science, but he also realized that space plasma physics âwas too narrow a basisâ for his institute;96 and thus he decided to extend research activities to gamma and X-ray astronomy, too.97 An aspect of the crucial role of Lüstâs travels to the US in the early 1960s was emphasized by Klaus Pinkau:
[Lüst] came to the conclusion that research in X-Ray astronomy in the US was so far advanced that he had no chance to catch up. In Gamma Ray astronomy on the other hand, and looking at the work of Kraushaar and Clark, Lüst considered that a new activity at MPE would have the chance of catching up with international standards and this is the reason why he thought that the new MPE could well do Gamma Ray Astronomy.98
By February 1964, Lüst had submitted to esro an experiment for the measurement of gamma rays, whose purpose was the determination of extrasolar sources of high-energy gamma rays likely produced by âthe interaction of primary charged cosmic rays with the interplanetary medium.â99 In 1965, the new field of gamma astronomy in Garching began in earnest with the appointment of Klaus Pinkau,100 who had been an experimental cosmic ray physicist in Hamburg and Kiel with Erich Bagge, and in Bristol with Cecil Powell, as well as visiting scientist at Louisiana State University, with expertise in the detectors then used for elementary particle research with cosmic rays.101 When cern and American facilities around the end of the 1950s shifted experimental particle physics overwhelmingly toward accelerators, Pinkauâlike many of his colleagues in the fieldâsaw the traditional use of cosmic rays as an efficient source of events for particle physics become obsolete, and so he found new applications for his instrumental expertise.
Interest was shifting to the already established study of the extensive cosmic ray showers generated in the atmosphere by high-energy primary particles, and this revived the study of their nature and origin, as messengers originating in extreme astronomical environments which could be studied directly by radio astronomers. In 1950, the two astrophysicists Hannes AlfveÌn and Nicolai Herlofson, along with Karl-Otto Kiepenheuer (see Chapter 1), had proposed a theory explaining the phenomenon of radio emissions as originating from ultrarelativistic electrons spiraling in weak interstellar magnetic fields and emitting synchrotron radiation (also known as Magnetobremsstrahlung, magnetic braking radiation).102 Between the end of the 1940s and the early 1950s, only a few scientists, such as AlfveÌn, Biermann, Chandrasekhar, and later, Eugene Parker, realized the potential role of plasmas and magnetic fields in the Universe.103 The connection established between cosmic rays (in particular their electron component) and cosmic radio emission of a synchrotron origin was shedding light on the possibility of acquiring information on cosmic rays far from the Earth, both inside our galaxy and beyond its limits. Thus, cosmic rays turned out to be a source of important astrophysical information, an essential ingredient of the Universe.
Many of these astrophysical processes were also expected to produce gamma rays, as pointed out by Philip Morrison in 1958.104 At the end of the 1950s, when it had become increasingly clear that energy-releasing processes of a quite different type than the thermonuclear ones were of importance for the evolution of stars and galaxies, Morrison, who had studied at Berkeley under the supervision of Robert Oppenheimer, and had later worked at Los Alamos on the implosion problem for nuclear weapons, discussed the great potential of gamma ray astronomy. He pointed out that gamma radiation is more directly related to high-energy and nuclear processes than optical or radio emission, and yet does not share with high-energy charged particles the complete loss of information about the position of its source. The intensity of such fluxes later turned out to be far weaker than Morrison had predicted, yet his article was instrumental in raising interest in this new kind of astronomyâand in its connection with the origin of high-energy cosmic ray particlesâand so gamma ray detection in outer space became a most promising field after Sputnik, as it was clear that the low intensity of cosmic gamma rays required space-based detectors.
Furthermore, there was a direct Cold War connection, as gamma ray detection in outer space used the same technology needed for detecting nuclear explosions, and much of the early work in cosmic gamma rays resulted from these bomb-detection satellites, as we mentioned earlier in Chapter 2.105
Pinkau was part of a distinct new scientific tradition in the Max Planck Society, which had grown around the hybrid field of balloon-based particle physics in the 1950s. These were the high-altitude experiments with photographic emulsions and, later, spark chambers, in which cosmic rays were not the main object of study but rather the source of high-energy subatomic events.106 At the end of the 1950s, when the discovery of very high-energy cosmic particles detected by air shower arrays raised new questions about the astrophysical sources and acceleration mechanisms of the primary radiation, gamma ray astronomy was expected to be a leap forward in studies on the connections between cosmic particles and the emission of gamma rays. As the leading edge of particle physics shifted to Cern and other accelerator centers in the US, Pinkau moved to gamma ray astronomyâwhich represented for him the âastrophysical aspect of cosmic raysââwhere a similar use of his spark chambers could be made.
In his capacity as technical director at Esro in the period 1962â64, Lüst had met Jacques Labeyrie and Giuseppe Occhialini, with whom he discussed the proposal for a satellite experiment on gamma rays and cosmic particles in space.107 In this regard, spark chambers were developed at MPE. Cosmic ray astronomyâand therefore gamma ray astronomyâwas a field left open for research by cosmic ray scientists now that the path of high-energy interaction physics was closed by the advent of a new generation of more powerful accelerators. Studying cosmic rays and gamma radiation with balloons at high altitudes required a level of expertise in airborne instrumentation in Kiel that went far beyond what was available in Garching during the early years of Reimar Lüstâs plasma cloud experiments.108 In fact, upon his appointment in Garching, Pinkau brought with him his entire experimental team, which became a separate technical workshop from which true space-based astronomy would emerge.109
When Pinkau joined the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in 1965, it had become clear that satellites and spark chambers would be the tools to enable good high-energy gamma ray experiments to be conducted.110 The early activities of Pinkauâs group concentrated on setting up a competitive gamma ray astronomy research initiative, developing the instrumentation for it and establishing the international connections required. As recalled by Pinkau himself, in an interview in 2016, balloon work introduced to Kiel from Bristol, and later also to the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics,
was not only important for Gamma and X ray astronomy as such, but also an important step in qualifying equipment for satellite experiments. We later stopped balloon launches in Germany and used the US possibilities.
He also emphasized that he had very little or no interaction with other teams at the Institutes for Physics, Astrophysics, and Extraterrestrial Physics, since by that time,
their actual research work had developed in very different directions, using very different methods and applying to fields of science that were different and had little connection,
even if they were linked under the umbrella of the Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics; and he specified that:
At MPE, my group was strongly concentrated on gamma ray astronomy, and the international aspect of the large mimosa [Milano-Monaco-Saclay collaboration] and the Caravane Collaboration absorbed most of our free activities. These activities had little interaction with Plasma physics or any other topic of the Astrophysics Institute. Rather, we were interested in X-ray astronomy and finally helped to attract [Joachim] Trümper into the institute.111
And actually, once Trümper arrived as director at MPE in 1975, he had already devised plans for an ambitious X-ray astronomy project that would eventually lead to the rosat (ROentgen SATellite), one of the most successful X-ray astronomy missions of the past century.
Pinkau also recalled that they were very interested in infrared astronomy, because the process of inverse Compton scattering, by which very energetic electrons transfer some of their energy to photons, connects gamma rays, X-rays, photons of visible light, and infrared photons, and so these different astronomies have an internal connection:
This interest finally led to attracting [Reinhard] Genzel into the institute. In this way, gamma ray astronomy within MPE influenced an even larger sector of its field of research.
And indeed, with the arrival of Genzel in the mid-1980s (described in more detail in Chapter 4), brand-new regions of the spectrum in ground- and space-based astronomy were opened at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Even earlier, when Trümper arrived at the institute, they stopped cosmic ray particle work completely in order to liberate manpower for his research activities. According to Pinkau, âGenzel later was supported for his infrared activities by manpower from the ion cloud group.â112 A further example of the mechanism of recycling internal expertise for launching a new research field dated back to 1961, when the whole group of experimental cosmic rays had been transferred from Heisenbergâs Institute for Physics to the new Department for Extraterrestrial Research led by Reimar Lüst at the Institute for Astrophysics.113
In Garching, Pinkau became the most important scientific contributor to esroâs first gamma ray observatory missions. Despite the relative weakness of West Germans in European collaborations at the time, at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Pinkau secured a primary scientific role for German researchers in space astronomy through expertise in detection techniques, which at the time consisted of spark chambers as used in particle physics research.114 Later, Pinkau was the principal investigator of COS-B, the European Space Agencyâs first scientific satellite (rather than esro), launched in 1975 with a high-energy gamma telescope as payload, which provided the first map of the galactic gamma-ray emission.115
This was an early example of what became the periodic cross-fertilization of experimental techniques originating in particle physics or in the new fields of astronomy and astrophysics.116
Wavelength Completion in the 1970s and X-Ray Astronomy
By the early 1970s, observational astronomy was an activity conducted at three institutes, in Bonn, Heidelberg, and Garching. Most importantly for the future dominance of astronomy in the Max Planck Society, each of these institutes had been created around expertise with a particular wavelength: radio waves in Bonn, the visible range in Heidelberg, and high-energy radiation observable outside the atmosphere in Garching. This division of labor between the major wavelengths formed the basis of the expansion program in astronomy for the next generation, whose task would be to fill in the gaps between them. Thus, the Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn strove in its next projects for pioneering dishes and detectors for even smaller wavelengths, first with iram (Institut de Radioastronomie MillimeÌtrique), in the millimeter range, in the 1970s (detailed in Chapter 4),117 followed by the Heinrich Hertz telescope in the sub-millimeter range, in the 1980s.118
In Garching, at the other end of the spectrum, the race began in the most energetic gamma rays in the late 1960s, followed by its most successful project, the national X-ray satellite rosat built under the direction of Joachim Trümper from the late 1970s through the 1980s. X-ray astronomy was in fact another successful spin-off of cosmic ray research.119
Together with Klaus Pinkau, Trümper had been the other main high-energy researcher within Erich Baggeâs group between Hamburg and Kiel, becoming an expert builder of spark chambers and later developing an air shower experiment, which explored particle cascades generated by extremely energetic cosmic rays in the atmosphere, in the hope of determining the chemical composition of such primary particles and investigating high-energy processes within the showers.120 Trümper was also interested in the origin of cosmic rays, but such experiments could provide no clues. The Crab Nebula pulsar (NP0532), actually recognized as such in 1968, opened a new perspective in this sense.121 Since the Crab Nebula had for a long time been known to be a strong source of synchrotron radiation, covering the spectrum from the radio and optical range to X- and gamma rays, it appeared to be a possible source of high-energy particles. The hypothesis that losses in the ability of a pulsar to accelerate particles should result in a decrease of the X-ray signal led Trümper to apply in 1971 to the dfg (German Research Foundation, see Chapter 2) to obtain funds for an X-ray balloon experiment that would check theoretical predictions and observe other X-ray sources. In the meantime, Trümper had moved to Tübingen University, where he had been appointed to the Chair of Astronomy as successor to Heinrich Siedentopf:
At the time [Trümper recalls] it was a monstrosity [Ungeheuerlichkeit] that a physicistâa nuclear physicistâhad been appointed as Chair of Astronomy...122
In Tübingen he developed the balloon-borne High Energy X-Ray Experiment (hexe).123 The hexe collaboration made 14 successful balloon flights from 1973 through 1987, discovering many new X-ray sources. Balloons were relatively inexpensive and still allowed some competitive results if compared with rockets in the case of neutron stars. When such balloon experiments were starting, Uhuru, the first satellite dedicated entirely to X-ray astronomy, launched in December 1970, provided the first comprehensive survey of the entire sky for X-ray sources.124
In 1969â70, Trümper had visited the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics while still at Kiel University, and the foundations for more ambitious plans in X-ray astronomy were laid during this year.125 It was quite clear for Trümper that, to pursue his goalsâa big project like an X-ray satelliteâhe needed âthe impact of a Max Planck Institute.â The base in Tübingenâwhere he pursued balloon and rocket experiments, also working in connection with nasa and esa satellitesâwas not sufficient for this.126
In 1975, when Trümper moved to Garching as director at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics,127 he reunited with the formerly Kiel-based team already working there, now continuing the collaboration with the Tübingen group, organizing successful joint balloon expeditions, significantly enlarging and improving the instruments for hexe. With their balloon program, their goal was to observe, with large-area counters, sources that had been discovered by the legendary Uhuru satellite in 1971â72. But Uhuru worked in the energy range of 2 to 6 keV, while their instruments could measure 20 to 200 keV, which was âa very successful bread and butter program.â128 Their balloon experiments could thus extend the information to higher energies, leading in 1978 to new insight with a most important discovery, the first measurement of the magnetic field of a neutron star (Hercules X-1) using the cyclotron line emission.129 These research activities, which were now relabeled âhigh-energy astrophysics,â became more and more connected to what was being unveiled as the hot and energetic Universe, and laid the foundation for the further development of X-ray astronomy during the long preparation of the rosat satellite.130
They also achieved good results with rocket experiments, however, as Trümper recalled:
Rocket flights were much more expensive than balloon flights, that were financially within reach of dfg applications with an entity of a few 100,000 DM [Deutschmarks]. More importantly, missile observations lasted only about five minutesâfar too short for neutron stars that I was particularly interested in. With rockets, it was practically only possible to make observations of the intense solar radiation, with funding going through esro and later the dfvlr.131
On the other hand, as also in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, national programs were a necessary platform for a successful connection with esa and NASA missions.
In the 1960s and 1970s a large mass of data of high scientific value was collected by stratospheric balloons and rocket experiments, despite the limitations on altitude (about 40 km), respectively on observation time (of only a few minutes). And while observations in the atmosphere and lower ionosphere could be made by relatively inexpensive rockets, in the case of gamma and X-ray astronomy, a good astronomical program required very expensive large satellites with high pointing accuracy and stability, which could observe X-ray sources over an extended period of time and make further important progress. In Tübingen, Trümper had already submitted a proposal to the dfg, for funding for a balloon experiment to study the spectra and time variability of the new X-ray sources discovered by the satellite Uhuru. While in Tübingen, they could do balloon experiments and rocket experiments and participate in esa and Nasa satellites, but it was no coincidence that, in the year of his appointment as director at MPE, he submitted an application for an X-ray satellite to the Federal Ministry of Scientific Research (until 1962, the Ministry of Atomic Affairs), within the large-scale equipment program. Trümper had in fact accepted the directorship at MPE because it provided a much more powerful basis for carrying out satellite missions. In retrospect, Trümper remarked:
And so, already in 1972, they started developing an X-ray telescope with the Zeiss company in Oberkochen.
Since the development of this satellite spanned more than two decades, its role in internationalization shifted over the years. The satellite initially fulfilled the ambitions for a national project or even âinfrastructure,â as far as this was possible for a West German space-based instrument: as we have described, its conception was the outcome of a longstanding research tradition spanning Kiel, Tübingen, and Garching. The satellite platform was provided by Dornier in Friedrichshafen, and communications with it were to be done from the German Aerospace Center at Oberpfaffenhofen, using the Weilheim antennas. As with all West German satellites, there was inevitably an international touch to the launch, in this case provided by NASA (initially as a Shuttle launch, but due to the Challenger explosion, a rocket instead). But by the 1980s, the expectations for internationalization had shifted, as we will see in further detail in Chapter 4. Several projects that were initially ânationalâ were, one could say, âretrofittedâ as international collaborations. The IRAM 30 m telescope is the best such example, as we will see in Chapter 4, and all three examples in Chapter 5 further illustrate the new era. In the case of ROSAT, a condition of its support by the West German government was that it attract enough international collaboration. Thus, the United States and the United Kingdom not only supplied third party funding, but also two instruments for the satellite launched in 1990: NASAâs High Resolution Imager, built by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and the Wide Field Camera, built by a British consortium led by the University of Leicester.
Since its launch in June 1990, ârosat has made history.â It performed the first all-sky survey with an imaging telescope and radically changed our view of the Universe with high angular resolution and a sensitivity that was orders of magnitude better than previous X-ray surveys of the sky, a survey resulting in a catalogue that contained more than 150,000 individual sources, 25 times more than with all previous X-rays satellites together.133
Furthermore, rosat guaranteed the MPEâs continued global leadership in X-ray telescopes to this day: in addition to contributing instrumentation to Nasa and Esa telescopes (see below), the MPE has continued to strive for access to space independently of these organizations; firstly, with the Abrixas satellite in the 1990s, which unfortunately was lost owing to failure of its German-built battery system (more on this in Chapter 4); and then the long-delayed but now extremely successful X-ray space telescope erosita (extended ROentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array), one of the two instruments on board the joint GermanâRussian mission Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (srg), successfully launched from Baikonur in July 2019ânearly 30 years after the rosat mission.134 During its first all-sky survey, completed in June 2020, erosita detected over a million sources of X-rays, basically doubling in just six months the number of known sources discovered over the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy.135
Wavelength Completion and Coordination of the Different Institutes and Research Traditions
Finally, as already briefly mentioned, a parallel branch of research was initiated in airborne and space-based infrared astronomy in Heidelberg in the early 1970sâindependently, in addition to the large optical telescopesâunder the direction of Dietrich Lemke (further details in Chapter 4); and there was even talk of a separate sub-institute of âExtraterrestrial Astronomy.â136
Each such project had a lasting impact on the form of the local expertise and specialized facilities for development and testing of these instrumental systems, and this in turn secured the institutesâ participation in future projects, whenever research moved beyond the national framework to focus on international collaborations. One notable example is the X-ray testing facilities of the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. The first such facility, ZETA, was built to test the X-ray telescopes flown with rockets between 1979 and 1987, and improved over the years to meet the functional testing requirements for new projects. An X-ray beam line test facility named PANTER was subsequently built on the southwest outskirts of Munich, to test the mirrors for the final rosat satellite, and, later, a smaller facility called PUMA within the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.137 These testing facilities, mostly used for the characterization of X-ray telescopes as well as for tests of detectors and other instruments, are accredited with the unparalleled precision attained by the telescopes of the MPE, also thanks to the radiation detectors developed at the Halbleiterlabor, the semiconductor laboratory of the Max Planck Society. PANTER, which meanwhile has over 40 years of experience in testing and calibrating X-ray optics, has gone on to play a crucial role in ground X-ray calibration in subsequent international projects such as exosat (European X-Ray Observatory Satellite), BeppoSAX, Xmm-Newton, the MPE instrument on Chandra, letg (Low Energy Transmission Grating), the X-ray Telescope (xrt) on the Neil Gehrels Swift multi-wavelength space Observatory, eRosita, etc.
The spread of observational astronomy over the entire electromagnetic spectrum (ranging from radio waves to high-energy photons with
This wavelength expansion that began in the mid-1960s is the first clear example of a well-articulated narrative advocating the coordination of scientific work among several Max Planck Institutes in order to guarantee their national dominance in a scientific field. It provided a clear scientific justification for continued growth (filling the wavelength gaps), and brought together a set of decision makers with a coherent common ground in the discipline of observational astronomy, who were superbly connected with a global network of research in the field.
We will see in the following chapters how this observational astronomy research program, based on building a national infrastructure, interacted with extant traditions in the cosmic sciences at the Max Planck Society. The growing importance of observational astronomy forced scientists in the Max Planck Society to reflect on the identity of the organization and the kind of research that best identified it. Astrophysics, and even the early Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, had benefited from an ideology of putting theory first. This had made economic and political sense in the early postwar era, but continued to be fostered also through the 1960s, when theoreticians such as Schlüter and Lüst were appointed as directors of eminently experimental institutes. Even the experimentalist Gentner drew much of his legitimacy from his ability to link experimental initiatives with far-reaching theoretical questions in particle physics.
In contrast, the first generation of ground-based observational astronomers could best be described as large telescope builders, and in the case of radio astronomers, many had a strong engineering background. Space astronomers such as Pinkau and Trümper, meanwhile, came from an experimental particle physics tradition, so found themselves somewhere mid-way on this spectrum; yet as Max Planck Institute directors, their primary task was to build the best instruments in the world in their given wavelength. In this first generation of wavelength expansion, the emphasis was on large, general-purpose telescopes for sky-wide surveys.
Now, after a decade of expansion in astronomy, the gigantic observatory institutes of the Max Planck Society were staffed by directors and teams who considered themselves instrument builders, and the cultural bias against them on the part of the older generation, particularly among the plasma physicists, would recurrently prove problematic.139 This was compounded by differences in personal style: although belonging to different generations (Hachenberg had been trained in the 1930s, Elsässer and Mezger in the 1950s), the ground-based astronomers without a background in physics carried out their role of observatory builder and director in a leadership style not unlike that of a naval captain. This was a generation that considered a choleric temperament crucial to the success of its titanic projects.140 Fortified by their regional and national sources of financial and political support, these scientists remained as independent as possible from the Max Planck Society, and especially from anything coming out of Munich. Some of themâPeter Mezger in Bonn, for oneâwere renowned for their antagonism towards Reimar Lüst during his presidency, and could afford to be, too, owing to the instrumental excellence of the Bonn institute and its pioneering telescopes.141 Throughout the rest of the century, the observatory institutes in Heidelberg and Bonn, for example, rejected proposals to appoint directors with a theoretical background and programs, in contrast to the predominance of theoreticians in Munich/Garching and, increasingly, also at the Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, and Aeronomy in Lindau.142 Even the Institute for Plasma Physics and the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, which had started as eminently experimental endeavors, appointed some directors with a theoretical agenda.
The âtamingâ of the astronomer directors in the Max Planck Society, in Bonn and Heidelberg, was a slow process, which began with Otto Hachenberg himself. Already in 1967â68, before his institute was inaugurated, the established personalities in the cosmic sciences, represented by Wolfgang Gentner, head of the CPT section at the time, as well as by Reimar Lüst and Ludwig Biermann, were exchanging correspondence regarding the attitude of Hachenberg, who did not seem to accept the implications of being part of the Max Planck Society.143 Hachenberg had successfully avoided a co-directorship with Sebastian von Hoerner and was now seeking to appoint a loyal disciple for the post. Given the contemporaneous reforms in the MPG, towards collegiate directorship, this was unacceptable, and the Society instead made sure to nominate two people with close links to nrao and to von Hoerner: Peter Mezger, who ended up staying in Bonn for the rest of his career, and Peter Stumpff, a disciple of Biermann who did not accept the position, which was taken instead by Richard Wielebinski, one of the first non-German directors, whose trajectory was mentioned earlier in the chapter.
Hachenberg never quite accepted Mezgerâs presence at âhisâ institute during the first decade of operations, and this thwarted Mezgerâs access to Effelsberg, who focused instead on building his own millimeter-wavelength telescopes. Another contrast with Hachenberg was Mezgerâs distant relationship with Bonn University (and others in the area). Gentner, Lüst, and Biermann had considered it inacceptable that Hachenberg retain a powerful directorial role at Bonn University in parallel to his Max Planck position, whereas in fact both the MPI and the universityâs Institute for Astronomy were put in the same building. Throughout the 1970s, Max Planck representatives pressed for a true collegiate directorship in Bonn, with a Board of Trustees (Kuratorium) and Scientific Advisory Board (Fachbeirat), as well as for clear boundaries between the Max Planck Institute and the university. Conveniently, the advent of these changes coincided with Hachenbergâs retirement in 1977 from the MPI (although not yet from his work at the university). Hachenberg was initially replaced by someone from nrao, Kenneth Kellermann (see Chapter 4), who, however, returned to his position in the United States after a few years.144 Mezger, who survived this conflictive first decade, became the dominant figure in Bonn until his retirement in the late 1990s, and, too, a weighty presence in those MPG decision-making bodies dealing with matters of cosmic research.
At the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg the situation was not significantly better. The initial plans there likewise called for collegiate directorship, and it was assumed that a second director would be needed to take charge of the instrumentation and scientific operations at the optical observatories foreseen. Promising personalities were offered this positionâPeter Strittmatter, for example, whose career later intersected considerably with the MPG, as we will see in the next chapterâbut they declined in view of the long delays. Eventually, a second director was found: Guido Münch had a strong track record at Yerkes, Mount Wilson, and Palomar, in the United States, and at the time of his appointment was relatively advanced in his prominent career.145 Münch was a helpful balancing force to the choleric Elsässer, particularly in dealing with the Spanish counterparts during the construction and operation of Calar Alto; but he did not have the same authority at the Heidelberg institute and the Max Planck Society,146 spending much of his time abroad instead. Elsässer in contrast held significant power in the MPG central organs, even becoming the first astronomer acting as head of the CPT section in the period 1976â79. The Heidelberg Institute for Astronomy had to wait until the 1990s for a truly collegiate directorship (a transition described at the end of Chapter 4).
It could be argued that the Max Planck Society had a bad hand even after the reforms of the 1960s, when dealing with founding directors, since they, having enabled the Society and West Germany to quickly rise to the challenges of the space age, often (rightfully) considered that these âowed themâ; on subsequent generations, however, the MPG imposed terms and conditions that fostered a more collective approach to proceedings. In the case of the cluster of institutes conducting cosmic research, even after its post-Sputnik expansion for two additional decades, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, collective decision-making at the Max Planck Society level depended on maintaining a fragile equilibrium between the modernized second-generation scientists representing nuclear physics in Heidelberg or the family of institutes in Munich, who in both cases identified as physicists, and the more idiosyncratic personalities of the astronomers and engineers in Heidelberg and Bonn.
3 Reconfiguration of the Astrophysical Sciences and Institutes
The next major coordination process that strengthened the monopoly of the cosmic sciences in the Max Planck Society was related to generational renewal and the shifting emphasis of scientific research. The initial âspace scienceâ generation had focused on plasma physics problems, first theoretically and then experimentally. By the late 1960s, however, the future lay in space-based astronomy. Factional rivalry peaked around the election of the next Max Planck Society president in 1973, but when Reimar Lüst was elected, he worked toward reconciliation. This increased the circulation of scientists among the cosmic Max Planck Institutes as new directors were appointed, facilitating the division of scientific labor among them. Extraterrestrial Physics specialized further in space-based astronomy; space plasmas was concentrated in Lindau, and the institute there also moved into planetary exploration, together with the Mainz institute. Other plasma physicists became theoretical astrophysicists and inaugurated theoretical lines of research, for example, in Heidelberg. The enormous Institute for Plasma Physics was readmitted to the Max Planck Society and its infrastructure and institutional support mobilized for the benefit of the astrophysics institutes.
A Plasma Physicistsâ Diaspora
As was shown earlier using financial data, one characteristic of the cosmic sciences in the Max Planck Society is that they, unlike most other research fields, did not experience a period of âstagnationâ in the 1970s; instead, the growth sparked by the launch of Sputnik continued. Indeed, many of the largest projects in the field were completed during the 1970s and 1980s, and it was only in the final years of the Cold War that this growth significantly slowed, and then simply remained constant on a par with the Max Planck Society as a whole.147
However, there were significant changes in the way the cosmic sciences operated in the periods before and after the early 1970s. These coincided with several important factors but were also the culmination of a process that had been gathering momentum for the past decade. While the first decade after Sputnik saw vast growth in the cosmic sciences, as these found their autonomy and justification beyond the nuclear sciences, initially they expanded in very different directions, as illustrated by the contrast between space plasma research in Munich, cosmochemistry in the southwest, and the observatory institutes in Bonn and Heidelberg. By the mid-1960s, however, there were increasing overlaps between the interests of various institutes, most strikingly between the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in Garching, and the Institute for Aeronomy in Lindau, near Göttingen, regarding participation in space projects. By the early 1970s, there was a perceptible crisis in the Aeronomy Institute, where attempts to find a permanent replacement for Julius Bartels had failed for almost a decade. We return to the outcome of these at the end of the chapter.148
Generational Change
Simultaneously, the end of the 1960s saw one of the major turning points in the history of the Max Planck Society, owing to planning for the imminent retirement of Werner Heisenberg, which matter turned the spotlight on how best to organize the succession. Having gained influence and authority throughout the 1960s, Wolfgang Gentner now presided over the commission at the Institute for Physics in Munich-Freimann tasked to find the next director.149 This commission included international figures in particle physics, such as Victor Weisskopf, who was a professor at Mit and had served as Director General of Cern in the first half of the 1960s. On May 21, 1969, Weisskopf, who had been Heisenbergâs post-doc student in 1931, wrote to Gentner that he felt â[â¦] it would be difficult for a theoretician to step into the shoes of Heisenberg,â and added that an experimental physicist would be a more appropriate choice; Wolfgang Paul, he opined, âwould be a perfect candidate.â150 In November, Heisenberg wrote to Weisskopf that the really important question for the future of the Institute for Physics would be how well research work there fit with other parts of the Institute for Physics and Astrophysics: â[â¦] auf diese Einheit haben wir immer besonders Wert gelegt (We have always attached a special importance to this unity)â [emphasis added]. Heisenberg also remarked,
It is one of the basic principles of the Max Planck Society that its institutes should not simply participate in conventional research, but that scientific directions are promoted that are either too expensive, in order to be properly performed at universities, or to be tied to the person of a researcher who is to be given the opportunity to carry out his unconventional work vigorously. From these points of view one should also look for my successor.151
After one year, in June 1970, it was reported that the commission had been unable to find a successor and it had been decided: 1) To install Hans-Peter Dürr as provisional director; 2) To rename the commission âFuture of the Institute for Physicsâ; 3) To include von Weizsäcker as member of the commission.152
Heisenberg retired as Managing Director on December 31, 1970, and Hans-Peter Dürr was installed as Provisional Director. Eventually, an interim period of leadership by the then Director of the Theory Division at Cern, LeÌon Van Hove, was arranged, in an attempt to repair the major breaches that had resulted in the past decade from the antagonistic relationship between Heisenberg and the particle physics community, including that in his own institute.153 An excellent phenomenologist, Van Hove could well balance the theoretical and experimental traditions at the Institute for Physics, providing a perspective which had been sorely lacking, and that could truly answer questions arising from experimental physics. By that time, both theoretical and experimental groups at the institute were conducting a large proportion of their work in Geneva and thus a strong interaction with Van Hove himself would result from all this. Van Hove proposed a Kollegium (Board of Directors, i.e., collegial directorship) at the institute, in which all scientific members should participate, and too, that he would lead it in the three-year reorganization phase, while continuing, in parallel, his scientific work at Cern.154 He took up the directorship in Munich on October 1, 1971, approximately three years after the first official discussions about Heisenbergâs successor.155
Reorganization of the institute further progressed in 1972, when Leo Stodolsky was called from Stanford, bringing on board a theoretician who would be able to focus in particular on a phenomenological approach. This kind of application of theoretical models to high-energy experimental physics would forge a beneficial bridge between experimental and theoretical groups at the institute.156 Van Hove remained only until October 1, 1974, but stronger relationships with cern had been established in this period, and both the theoretical and experimental groups had been reinforced. He continued to be connected with the institute as an External Scientific Member and became Director General at Cern in 1976.157
The early post-Heisenberg era also coincided with Biermannâs retirement. During the meeting of the Scientific Council of June 26, 1973, Gentner stressed that the problem of how to replace Biermann necessarily involved the larger question of the three sub-institutesâ future development and collaboration. No decision was taken until the following February, when it was reported that the committee had decided to propose that the Senate appoint Rudolf Kippenhahn as Director of the Institute for Astrophysics, who had moved to the University of Göttingen after working for several years at the Institute for Astrophysics on the structure and evolution of stars (more on this in Chapter 4).158 Hans Elsässer emphasized that he and fellow members of the commission had thoroughly examined the fundamental question of the instituteâs future: Should such an internationally recognized institute be continued? To dissolve it would fly in the face of policy clearly implemented in the previous years, when the Max Planck Society had founded two new Institutes, for Astronomy and for Radio Astronomy. A theoretical institute, stressed Elsässer, should complement the existing astronomical institutes. Alfred Seeger remarked that one might also consider developing theoretical groups in these two extant institutes, whereupon Klaus Pinkau explained the material and financial grounds for retaining a theoretical institute. The latter, the commission felt, should not relocate to Bonn or Heidelberg but remain in the Munich area.159 In Chapter 4, we revisit how this line of argument periodically resurfaced during subsequent succession proceedings, regarding the status of the Institute for Astrophysics.
By the end of 1973, Adolf Butenandtâs presidency was coming to an end, and it was expected that Gentner would become the next president of the Max Planck Society. However, once again, the unexpected happened: Gentner, of advanced age and in fact only five years younger than Heisenberg, had some health problems.160 Reimar Lüst was appointed, therefore, while Gentner accepted the less demanding role of vice-president. Against all expectations, this did not reignite the strong rivalry between Heidelberg and Munich, but led rather, in Gentnerâs final active years, to a period of compromises intended to defuse this conflictive relationship as far as possible.161 Many of the moves toward greater coordination among the various Max Planck Institutes should be seen in the light of this reconciliation process orchestrated by Lüst and Gentner.162
While this rapprochement between the physics institutes in Munich and Heidelberg was underway, observational astronomers were separately gaining influence within the Max Planck Society. There was a display of independence on the part of the observational astronomers when the Effelsberg telescope came into service in the early 1970s, and the two space exploration institutes in Lindau and Garching sought to use it for communication with their spacecraft. Unexpectedly, the Bonn radio astronomers denied them access, emphasizing that the giant antenna was to be used exclusively for astronomical purposes.163
Simultaneously, the most expensive infrastructural project in astronomy in the history of the Max Planck Society was about to be developed in Spain and South Africa, in relative independence of the Max Planck Societyâs central administration, thanks to the availability of federal funding for the national optical observatories. In Garching itself, there was growing interest on Klaus Pinkauâs part for expanding into X-ray astronomy, then seen as the next major frontier in space-based astronomy, and for which he sought to appoint his erstwhile colleague in Kiel, Joachim Trümper, as was mentioned in the previous chapter.
Meanwhile, at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, another personal catastrophe occurred in 1970, when Gentnerâs closest collaborator in cosmochemistry, Joseph Zähringer, was killed in a road accident.164 Attempts at finding a successor initially failed, extending these deliberations into Reimar Lüstâs presidency. Discussions of the problem of replacing Zähringer were also tied up with the reorganization of the cosmochemistry department that he had led and, more generally, with the future of cosmochemistry in the Max Planck Society.165
At the same time, in Heidelberg, Gentnerâs advanced age and health problems and subsequent decision to not accept the presidency raised the major matter of his succession.166
Finally, in Mainz, the decade-long search for a successor to Friedrich Paneth had ended in 1968 with the appointment of Christian Junge as Director of the newly founded Atmospheric Chemistry and Physical Isotopic Chemistry Department.167 This choice not only averted the risk of the Mainz Institute being dissolvedâwhich had been considered after potential successors declined the offer to head scientific departments thereâbut also marked a significant twist of fate, as Junge identified primarily as a meteorologist. Under his directorship, the institute focused increasingly on what would come to be called the âEarth systemâ sciences, and in later decades would even earn the institute the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 1995, which was awarded to Paul Crutzen, from 1980, Jungeâs successor.168 Jungeâs appointment cast doubt on whether the southwestern institute would maintain its cosmochemistry tradition, yet Jungeâs scientific lineage and instrumental expertise fit this focus extremely well. During his time in the United States, he had worked closely with the research group led by Hans Suess (a former candidate for the Mainz directorship), which had pioneered the analysis of small radioactive samples in the atmosphere. This work in the 1950s was closely associated with the problem of nuclear explosions in the atmosphere, eventually leading to their prohibition.169 The radiochemical and mass spectrometry techniques used in this research were then increasingly applied to wider atmospheric environmental issues. Cosmochemistry, which used virtually the same methodologies, maintained its presence in Mainz until the end of the century. Links with the Heidelberg institute remained strong, not only in cosmochemistry but also in the atmospheric sciences, as the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics likewise set up a department dedicated to isotope physics of the atmosphere.170 This research tradition had existed in Heidelberg even before there was a dedicated research group under Frank Arnold (famous for his work on the depletion of the ozone layer); for example, Hugo Fechtigâtrained, like Junge, under Suess in the United Statesâhad been a researcher in Heidelberg and became director there in 1974. Around the same time, the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics participated in the Aeros satellites built in Germany and launched by Nasa in collaboration with Karl Rawer (Freiburg), and the Dlr.171 Hans Suess, mentor of many at this fruitful intersection between cosmochemistry and the new atmospheric and Earth system sciences, was a regular visitor to the institute in Mainz.172
Aeronomy at the Crossroads between Plasma Physics, and Planetary Science
The major problem, however, remained finding a permanent director for the Institute for Aeronomy, which was under threat owing to not only the long vain efforts to find a successor to Bartels, but also the impending retirement of Dieminger in 1975,173 upon which his section of the institute was expected to close downâraising the specter of whether the entire institute would follow. The status and the future of the Aeronomy Institute were examined by a special committee that visited Lindau in summer 1973, as well as Mainz, Heidelberg, and Garching.174 On page 1 of the final report it was remarked that:
The Institute has recruited almost exclusively from its own students and is showing the signs of ingrowth/of lacking new blood, a phenomenon not unique in Lindau, but faced by similar institutes at many places [â¦] Ways must be devised to make possible a natural and regular turnover of scientific personnel of the Institute. Without such circulation and filtering process any laboratory that maintains a constant size is doomed to stagnation.
It was suggested (p. 2) that â[...] no attempt be made to transfer any existing groups from other MPIs to Lindauâ as âthe loss would be much larger than the potential gain for Lindau.â A major recommendation was to give top priority âto outside appointments over internal promotions,â in connection with the establishment of âa strong and active program for visitors and possibly a standing visiting committee to enhance and cultivate contacts with outside groups.â The committee proposed strengthening ties with neighboring universities, following other institutesâ example, wherever such contacts would be mutually beneficial. Moreover, universities should be encouraged âto use the unique facilities at Lindau in cooperative research projects.â Strengthening the theoretical aspects of the work in all successful areas of the institute and coupling them closely with experimental endeavors was strongly recommended: âan attempt should be made to recruit staff members capable of creating new theories, rather than making detailed calculations on existing models.â The final recommendations with respect to new directors or members of the institute were based on the âexpectation that the future field of research will be aimed toward the exploration of solar-planetary relationships by various techniques.â The committee also made it clear that it seemed impossible for the institute âto implement its proposed program without major reallocation of personnel and resources.â Finally, âThe choice of the new managing director is particularly crucial since it will be his [sic] task to restructure the Institute.â These main points were followed by a very detailed analysis and critique of the work of the instituteâand of its relationship to work carried out elsewhereâas well as some proposals for future programs. In particular, the committee stressed that (p. 3):
The strong dichotomy between the two institutes of which the MPI Lindau is composed, and indeed between groups within each institute, is immediately obvious, a separation which is unfortunate and a hindrance to the scientific development. We note that other MPIs which we visited [Mainz, Heidelberg, and Garching], housing much more divergent groups within their organization, have managed to create a definite spirit of unity, working to their benefit.
After recalling the interests in common with Garching (energetic particle measurements from satellites, balloons, and rockets), and the difference in emphasis (astrophysical aspects prominent in Garching, and solar-terrestrial problems at Lindau), it appeared that (p. 9) âthe level of the German space effort is large enough to accommodate these two groups and the resulting competition will be beneficial to both.â
The report also stressed (p. 8) its belief that:
the eiscat facility will constitute a most important landmark in the development of atmospheric and magnetospheric physics and that the participation of the Federal Republic in the project will ensure for German scientists an interest in one of the major growth areas of upper atmosphere research.
By this time, due to the political liabilities of operating a research station on UN-embargoed territory, the instituteâs station in Tsumeb (see Chapter 1) had already been given to the South Africans.175
The crucial source of pressure in the Institute for Aeronomy, beyond the quality issues emphasized in the report, was that the expertise there too closely intersected with that of the Extraterrestrial Institute; moreover, the growing interest in both Garching and Mainz to create a new Max Planck Institute for Meteorology would in all likelihood further undermine Lindauâs claim to a specific research subject in the atmosphere, the latter already attracting more attention in Mainz. With growing interest by astronomers in the Max Planck Society to expand the Societyâs astronomy footprint by opening new wavelength windows, there was increasing pressure to redistribute research programs between Garching and Lindau so that the space plasma physicists would relocate to the latter. In the early 1970s, both Gerhard Haerendel and Heinrich Völk from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics were invited to accept an appointment as Director of the Aeronomy institute, but both declined.176 Eventually, the head of the search committee, plasma physicist Ian Axford, decided to take the job himself, after persistent encouragement from gamma ray astronomer Klaus Pinkau.177
Deliberations regarding the Institute for Aeronomy also addressed the rising interest in environmentally related research at the Max Planck Society. As mentioned above, atmospheric chemistry expert Christian Junge had been appointed director in Mainz in 1968, and the maturation of artificial satellites sparked much interest there in space-based atmospheric research. At one point, there were discussions about a possible reform of the Institute for Aeronomy along these lines. With the appointment of Axford, however, things took a different turn: a new Max Planck Institute for Meteorology was established, not least owing to the influence of scientists at the Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching.178
As with many foreigners appointed to Max Planck institutes in crisis,179 Axford expected his move to Lindau to be a temporary solution but, in the end, stayed on as Director of the Institute for Aeronomy for 25 years. His appointment prompted the instituteâs further specialization in solar system research, with a strong emphasis on space plasmas related to the Sunâplanet interactions.180 Discussions also took place about the general development of the Institute for Aeronomy and coordination of its future activities with similar research taking place in Mainz, Heidelberg, and Garching. The outcome was a proposal that long-term projects in these institutes be harmonized as far as possible.
Several new directors were appointed, including Vytenis M. Vasilyunas from the United States,181 and Helmut Rosenbauer, again from the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, who moved his entire experimental space plasma group to Lindau.182 As for Gerhard Haerendel, Lüstâs successor in Garching, despite having resisted relocation to Lindau, he still acted as a crucial overseer of the Institute for Aeronomy in matters of ionospheric research by becoming involved in the multinational eiscat project, which conducted research on the lower, middle, and upper atmosphere and ionosphere using the incoherent scatter radar technique.183 In contrast, Erhard Keppler, a disciple of Regener, Ehmert, and Pfotzer, and the most important space researcher at the Institute for Aeronomy, was never made a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society but instead was given a new permanent position as âTechnical Director,â and continued to lead the instituteâs space missions.184
Since Haerendel remained in Garching, he was encouraged by Reimar Lüst to increasingly shift his focus from experimental space plasmas to astronomical, wavelength-based research, for which a small infrared team already existed. Haerendel explored this direction in the late 1970s, but the saturation of the wavelength-based division of scientific labor between the different Max Planck Institutes then started to show its limits; a well-developed infrared astronomy group already existed at the Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, and it protested this move.185
Moreover, plasma physicist migration away from Garching went far beyond Lindau. In the early 1970s, Gentner and Lüst convinced the theoretical plasma astrophysicist Heinrich Völk, as well as his collaborator Gregor Morfill, to move to Heidelberg as part of the Zähringer succession. Völk was appointed as one of the directors of the cosmochemistry section of the institute. There, he sought to redirect his work toward the theoretical interpretation of cosmochemical research on the evolution of the solar system, which was part of the joint research projects between Mainz and Heidelberg. But ultimately, he managed to maintain a foot in general astrophysics, which led to his involvement a decade later in the major push of his institute toward gamma ray astronomy, which will be discussed in the final chapter of this book.186
Astronomers in the Max Planck Society, who gained greatly in influence throughout the 1970s, appear to have exerted pressure in line with an implicit research hierarchy which considered deep space questions more interesting and fundamental than solar and planetary problems or plasma physics; these latter areas would have been seen as remnants of the early space age: redistribution of space plasma activities and near-space missions to Lindau and Mainz in the mid-1970s can be seen as a means for space astronomers and astrophysicists in Garching and Heidelberg (both nuclear physics and astronomy) to keep for themselves the research areas that they considered more interesting, while relegating to other institutes what they saw as the less glamorous solar system research, which bordered on geology rather than astrophysics. Lindau and Mainz scientists took up this challenge, however, and over the next two decades successfully turned their institutes into the major German base for interplanetary probes, and ultimately even found new international partners by collaborating with Soviet and, later, Russian space missions.187
The Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP): A Powerhouse for the Cosmic Sciences
The redistribution of expertise from plasma physics was not limited to the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, either. Throughout the 1970s, there were active attempts to make available to other Max Planck Institutes the expertise and technological developments that had originated at the Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP). As part of this move toward making the IPP more productive for the Max Planck Society, a company called Garching Innovation was founded for the purpose of commercializing the technological developments of the institute, and also of the Max Planck Society in general.188 Also, the Institute for Radio Astronomyâs new binational project iram (Institut de Radioastronomie MillimeÌtrique, see next chapter), modeled on the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, obtained a team of detector experts from the IPP.189
At the same time, the Max Planck Society reasserted its authority and scientific worldview over the Institute for Plasma Physics. In 1970, after a disappointing decade as an independent entity,190 the IPP was reabsorbed as an institute of the Max Planck Society, the implication being that the Societyâs scientific members could implement their vision of fundamental research at what had until then been primarily a reactor-building enterprise. At the end of this process, which included Arnulf Schlüterâs retirement in 1981, the gamma ray astronomer Klaus Pinkau from the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics was invited by Reimar Lüst to become Research Director of the IPP, which he remained until the end of the 1990s.191
This was a controversial move and caused disagreement with, for example, fellow director Joachim Trümper;192 it signaled the end of the 1970s surge toward wavelength specialization, and a new tendency to appoint directors more on account of their general scientific authority and problem-solving skills, such as Klaus Pinkau was able to channel into his effective leadership of the gigantic IPP. But in leaving the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Pinkau also jeopardized the balance there between the plasma physicists and the space astronomers.
Experimental plasma physics likewise had unforeseen positive consequences for deep space astronomy: in the mid-1970s, a major unexpected boost in gravitational wave research came from the IPP, after the Americans blocked its experiments in laser fusion research, deeming them too close to military applications.193 The spin-off was a new Institute for Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, largely dedicated to laser technology, and as we explore in detail in the last chapter of this book, it quickly found one of its main scientific missions in gravitational wave detection by interferometric means. An entire experimental group dating back to the time of Heinz Billing at the Institute for Astrophysics was accordingly transferred to the MPQ.194 This was the final step in turning what had been Biermannâs multifaceted institute into a purely theoretical one. The work of this spin-off gravitational wave experimental group will be treated in more detail later, in Chapter 5.
There had been prewar attempts at a Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Astronomy, significantly supported by its second President, the industrialist and amateur astronomer Carl Bosch. These, however, came at a moment of global financial crisis and by the time of World War II had not materialized. This prehistory had some symbolic influence on the siting of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. See Dietrich Lemke: Im Himmel über Heidelberg. 40 Jahre Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie in Heidelberg (1969â2009). Edited by Archiv der Max-Planck-Ges. Vol. 21. Berlin 2011. More on Carl Boschâs influence in prewar German astronomy is described in: Juan-Andres Leon: Citizens of the Chemical Complex. Industrial Expertise and Science Philanthropy in Imperial and Weimar Germany. Dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 2013.
Letter by Immo Appenzeller (AMPG, ZA 166, No. 57). Such criticism and its resolution are one of the main analytical axes of Chapter 4.
AMPG, ZA 166, No. 56, 57, 58, 59, 61.
Jakob Staude: Hans Elsässer. 29.3.1929â10.6.2003. In: Generalverwaltung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften (ed.): Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 2004. München: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften 2004, 111â112. Rolf Schwartz: Otto Hachenberg. 1.7.1911-24.3.2001. In: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften (ed.): Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 2002. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2002, 863. Michael Kramer et al.: Peter Georg Mezger. 19.11.1928-09.07.2014. Personalien 2014. Beileger zum Jahresbericht der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 2015, 37â38.
In 1960, there were four institutes with a significant footprint in the cosmic sciences, with one sub-institute fully dedicated to this (Biermannâs Institute for Astrophysics). By the mid-1990s, there were at least 11 institutes in the âcluster,â of which six were fully dedicated to the cosmic sciences, and at least four of those primarily to observational astronomy. See the Financial Appendix at the end of this book for additional insights.
For a wide review of the historical developments in modern astrophysics and cosmology, see Malcolm S. Longair: The Cosmic Century. A History of Astrophysics and Cosmology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006. For a retrospective of 20th-century scientific research in space with contributions by pioneers involved in the various disciplines, see Johan A. M. Bleeker, Johannes Geiss, and Martin C. E. Huber (eds.): The Century of Space Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001.
According to the Max Planck Societyâs budget plans, the total funds available to the Society grew around eight-fold between 1957 and 1975, inflation corrected. In the cosmic sciences, the rise was much more dramatic, as its weight within the MPG went from about 1 percent to 8 percent in the institutes fully dedicated to cosmic research, and about 12 percent to 24 percent of all the institutes with some presence in cosmic research (including also and especially nuclear research). For more details, see the Financial Appendix at the end of this book. For a more general view on the Societyâs dynamic growth during the years from 1955 to 1972 see JaromıÌr Balcar: Wandel durch Wachstum in »dynamischen Zeiten«. Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 1955/57 bis 1972. Berlin: GMPG-Preprint 2020.
See pp. 56â65 in Michael P. Seiler: Kommandosache âSonnengottâ. Geschichte der deutschen Sonnenforschung im Dritten Reich und unter alliierter Besatzung. Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Harri Deutsch 2007.
In Lemkeâs Im Himmel über Heidelberg see, for example, Fig. 2.3â3 showing the light-collecting surface of telescopes with a diameter > 50 m in individual countries since 1945, showing how West Germany was well behind not only US and UK, but also France, Italy, and USSR. Lemke, Himmel über Heidelberg, 2011, Vol. 21. See also Dietrich Lemke, and Astronomische Gesellschaft (eds.): Die Astronomische Gesellschaft 1863â2013. Bilder und Geschichten aus 150 Jahren. Heidelberg: Astronomische Gesellschaft 2013, 3.
This dire situation is well illustrated in Hans-Heinrich Voigt et al.: Denkschrift zur Lage der Astronomie. Wiesbaden: Steiner 1962. It will be discussed in more detail later.
Leon, Citizens of the Chemical Complex, 2013. Chapter 3.
Norris S. Hetherington: Walter Baade: A Life in Astrophysics. Physics Today 55/11 (2002), 69â69. doi:
After his education in Göttingen, Baade worked from 1919 to 1931 at the Hamburg Observatory at Bergedorfâat the time the largest telescope in Europeâand then moved to the USA. In 1933, he and the Swiss-born theoretical physicist Fritz Zwicky together proposed that cosmic rays could be produced in the supernovae explosion (a term they introduced in 1931 to identify this new category of astronomical objects); and they advanced the view that such cosmic rays could represent the transition from ordinary stars into neutron stars, compact objects having a very small radius and consisting in their final stages of extremely closely packed neutrons. Walter Baade, and Fritz Zwicky: Cosmic Rays from Super-Novae. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 20/5 (1934), 254â259. doi:
Otto Heckmann: Nachrufe. Hans Kienle. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 38 (1976), 9â10. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#abs/1976MitAG..38....9H. Last accessed 10/30/2018. Hans Elsässer: Nachrufe. H. Siedentopf. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 17 (1964), 33â41. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#abs/1964MitAG..17...33. Last accessed 10/30/2018. Hans-Heinrich Voigt: Nachruf auf Otto Heckmann. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 60 (1983), 9â12. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#abs/1983MitAG..60....9V. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
B. Baschek: Albrecht Unsöld (20. April 1905â23. September 1995). Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 79 (1996), 11â15. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/#abs/1996PhyBl..52..890B. Last accessed 10/30/2018. See also Albrecht Unsöld: Interview by Owen Gingerich, June 6, 1978. Transcript, AIP, https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4924. Last accessed 1/4/2019. Richard Wielebinski: Albrecht Unsöld. His Role in the Interpretation of the Origin of Cosmic Radio Emission and in the Beginning of Radio Astronomy in Germany. Journal of the Astronomical History and Heritage 16/1 (2013), 66â80. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013JAHH...16...67W. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
Voigt et al., Denkschrift Astronomie, 1962. This continued to be a problem in later decades for institutions outside the Max Planck Society: Heinrich J. Völk et al.: Denkschrift Astronomie. Weinheim: VCH 1987.
Adriaan Blaauw: ESOâs Early History. The European Southern Observatory from Concept to Reality. ESO 1991. See also ESO Historical Archives inventory: Adriaan Blaauw: ESO Historical Archives (EHA). Inventory per December 1992. Garching: European Southern Observatory 1992.
Reimar Lüst: Aktuelle Probleme der Weltraumforschung. Festvortrag anläÃlich der Jahresversammlung des Stifterverbandes in Wiesbaden am 11. Mai 1965. Essen-Bredeney: Gemeinnützige Verwaltungsgesellschaft für Wissenschaftspflege 1965. Reimar Lüst: The European Space Research Organization. Science 149/3682 (1965), 394â397. doi:
See, for example, Claus Habfast: GroÃforschung mit kleinen Teilchen. Das Deutsche Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY 1956â1970. Berlin: Springer 1989. Erich Lohrmann, and Paul Söding: Von schnellen Teilchen und hellem Licht. 50 Jahre Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH Verlag 2009.
Woodruff T. Sullivan III: The Early Years of Radio Astronomy. Reflections Fifty Years after Janskyâs Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1984. Woodruff T. Sullivan III: The History of Radio Telescopes, 1945â1990. Experimental Astronomy 25/1 (2009), 107â124. doi:
Astrid Elbers: The Rise of Radio Astronomy in the Netherlands. The People and the Politics. Cham: Springer 2016. B. R. Martin: Radio Astronomy Revisited. A Reassessment of the Role of Competition and Conflict in the Development of Radio Astronomy. The Sociological Review 26/1 (1978), 27â55. doi:
See Control Council and Coordinating Committee of the Allied Control Authority: Enactments and Approved Papers of the Control Council and Coordinating Committee. Allied Control Authority, Germany (1945â1948). 9 Volumes. Military Legal Resources. Federal Research Division. Library of Congress, III. https://www.loc.gov/collections/military-legal-resources/?q=enactments. Last accessed 10/30/2018. On p. 108 of Vol. 3, the list of Prohibited Applied Scientific Research includes electromagnetic, infrared, and acoustic radiation having the purpose of detecting objects or obstacles or the determination of the position of vehicles, aircraft, ships, submarines, or missiles.
Heinrich Siedentopf: Methoden und Ergebnisse der Radioastronomie. Vol. 6, 1954.
Woodruff Turner Sullivan III: Cosmic Noise. A History of Early Radio Astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009. See also David Leverington: Observatories and Telescopes of Modern Times. Ground-Based Optical and Radio Astronomy Facilities since 1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2017.
Kenneth Kellermann (ed.): A Brief History of Radio Astronomy in the USSR. A Collection of Scientific Essays. Translated by Denise C. Gabuzda. Dordrecht: Springer 2012.
Kenneth I. Kellermann, Ellen N. Bouton, and Sierra S. Brandt: The Largest Feasible Steerable Telescope. In: Kenneth I. Kellermann, Ellen N. Bouton, and Sierra S. Brandt (eds.): Open Skies: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory and Its Impact on US Radio Astronomy. Cham: Springer International Publishing 2020, 461â531. doi:
Leverington, Observatories and Telescopes, 2017.
Karl M. Menten: Leo Brandt. Pionier der Funkmesstechnik und Initiator der Radioastronomie in Deutschland. In: Bernhard Mittermaier, and Bernd-A. Rusinek (eds.): Leo Brandt (1908â1971). IngenieurâWissenschaftsfördererâVisionär. Jülich: Forschungszentrum Jülich, Zentralbibliothek 2009, 41â53. Richard Wielebinski: Fifty Years of the Stockert Radio Telescope and What Came Afterwards. Astronomische Nachrichten 328/5 (2007), 388â394. doi:
Richard Wielebinski: The New Era of Large Paraboloid Antennas. The Life of Prof. Dr. Otto Hachenberg. Advances in Radio Science 1 (2003), 321â324. doi:
See, for example, Manfred Rasch: Geschichte des Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituts für Kohlenforschung 1913â1943. Weinheim: VCH 1989. Sören Flachowsky: Von der Wagenburg der Autarkie zu transnationaler Zusammenarbeit. Der Verein Deutscher Eisenhüttenleute und das KWI/MPI für Eisenforschung 1917â2009. In: Helmut Maier (ed.): 150 Jahre Stahlinstitut VDEh 1860â2010. Essen: Klartext 2010, 671â708.
The grievances concerning North Rhine-Westphalia being too big a net contributor to federally funded research located elsewhere is a major recurring topic in Hans-Willy Hohn, and Uwe Schimank: Konflikte und Gleichgewichte im Forschungssystem. Akteurkonstellationen und Entwicklungspfade in der staatlich finanzierten auÃeruniversitären Forschung. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag 1990. On several occasions, North Rhine-Westphalia even threatened to stop funding federally led research. The specific example of the Effelsberg telescope was mentioned by Reimar Lüst, during the Roundtable âAstronomy and Astrophysics in the History of the Max Planck Society with a special focus on the Changes in the âClusterâ of Astronomy and Astrophysics within the MPG,â Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, October 21, 2016. Research Program History of the Max Planck Society. Report 2014â2017. Edited by Florian Schmaltz et al. 2014â2017. Berlin 2017, 108â109. See also Bernhard Mittermaier, and Bernd-A. Rusinek (eds.): Leo Brandt (1908â1971): IngenieurâWissenschaftsfördererâVisionär. Jülich: Forschungszentrum, Zentralbibliothek 2009.
Joachim Radkau: Aufstieg und Krise der deutschen Atomwirtschaft 1945â1975. Verdrängte Alternativen in der Kerntechnik und der Ursprung der nuklearen Kontroverse. Reinbek: Rowohlt 1983. Michael Eckert, and Maria Osietzki: Wissenschaft für Macht und Markt. Kernforschung und Mikroelektronik in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. München: Beck 1989.
John Cockcroft, first director of the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) at Harwell in the 1940s, was heavily involved in the establishment of Jülich under the initiative of Leo Brandt (more on him later). See Bernhard Mittermaier, and Bernd-A. Rusinek: Leo Brandt (1908â1971). IngenieurâWissenschaftsfördererâVisionär. Wissenschaftliche Konferenz zum 100. Geburtstag des nordrhein-westfälischen Forschungspolitikers und Gründers des Forschungszentrums Jülich. Jülich: Forschungszentrum Jülich 2009, 78.
Wielebinski, Fifty Years, 2007, 388â394.
Conversations with Reimar Lüst during the Roundtable âAstronomy and Astrophysics in the History of the Max Planck Society with a special focus on the Changes in the âClusterâ of Astronomy and Astrophysics within the MPG,â Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, October 21, 2016. Research Program History of the Max Planck Society, 2017, 108â109.
Joachim Radkau: Geschichte der Zukunft. Prognosen, Visionen, Irrungen in Deutschland von 1945 bis heute. München: Carl Hanser Verlag 2017, 131â170. Leo Brandt: Forschen und Gestalten. Reden und Aufsätze 1930â1962. Köln: Westdeutscher Verlag 1962.
Mittermaier, and Rusinek, Leo Brandt (1908â1971), 2009.
For a detailed, not entirely negative account of Esauâs trajectory in the Nazi state, see Mark Walker: German National Socialism and the Quest for Nuclear Power 1939â1949. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989. Esau and his deputy Kurt Diebner were arguably more effective for Germanyâs path toward nuclear fission than Heisenbergâs team, but the latter outmaneuvered them in internal power struggles (see p. 130) to the point that Gerlach replaced Esau as chief administrator of both Heisenbergâs and Diebnerâs reactor research projects. Esau was reassigned to radar research, where he began his close partnership with Brandt.
Mittermaier, and Rusinek, Leo Brandt (1908â1971), 2009, 14.
Otto Hachenberg: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, Bonn, February 22, 1973. NRAO Archives, http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_hachenberg_1973.shtml. Last accessed 1/4/2019. Peter Mezger: Interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, Bonn, November 22, 1973. NRAO Archives, http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_mezger_1973.shtml. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Peter Mezger, who worked as an engineer on the Astropeiler, realized during his stay there that it was not very productive scientifically. His calibration work, however, was the early basis of his expertise in radio telescope construction, which was later perfected in Green Bank. Peter Mezger: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, Bonn, November 22, 1973. For personal reminiscences on Green Bank, see also Jacob W.M. Baars: International Radio Telescope Projects. A life among their designers, builders and users. Rheinbach: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform 2013. Chapter 1 is entirely dedicated to the period in Green Bank.
Sebastian von Hoerner: Design of Large Steerable Antennas. The Astronomical Journal 72/1 (1967), 35â47. doi:
Richard Wielebinski: Sebastian von Hoerner. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 86 (2003), 9â10. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003MitAG..86....9. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
Sebastian von Hoerner: interviews by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, February 23, 1977, and August 20, 1979. NRAO Archives, http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_vonhoerner_1979.shtml. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
See, for example, Sebastian von Hoerner: Herstellung von Zufallszahlen auf Rechenautomaten. Zeitschrift für angewandte Mathematik und Physik 8/1 (1957), 26â52. doi:
Sebastian von Hoerner: Die numerische Integration des n-Körper-Problemes für Sternhaufen. I. Zeitschrift für Astrophysik 50 (1960), 184â214. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1960ZA.....50..184V. Last accessed 10/30/2018. Sebastian von Hoerner: Die numerische Integration des n-Körper-Problems für Sternhaufen. II. Zeitschrift für Physik 57 (1963), 47â82. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1963ZA.....57...47V. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
Jacob W. M. Baars: interview by Juan-Andres Leon, Bonn, February 5â7, 2018. DA GMPG, BC 601050.
Sebastian von Hoerner: interviews by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, February 23, 1977, and August 20, 1979. NRAO Archives, https://www.nrao.edu/archives/items/show/15272. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Wolfgang Priester: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan III August 30, 1976. NRAO Archives, https://www.nrao.edu/archives/items/show/15130. Last accessed 1/25/2022; Peter G. Mezger: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan, Bonn, November 22, 1973, Transcript. NRAO Archives, http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_mezger_1973.shtml. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Wielebinski, Sebastian von Hoerner, 2003, 9â10.
Conversations with Reimar Lüst during the Roundtable âAstronomy and Astrophysics in the History of the Max Planck Society.â Richard Wielebinski: The Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope. Naturwissenschaften 58/3 (1971), 109â116. doi:
Conversations with Reimar Lüst during the roundtable âAstronomy and Astrophysics in the History of the Max Planck Society.â
The evolution of these debates can be seen in the committee reports âGründung eines MPI für Radioastronomieâ (1964-01-01 bis 1968-11-04) during the CPTS meetings of the period (meeting minutes of 03.12.1964, 05.03.1965, 22.06.1965, 21.06.1966, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1744, 1745, 1746, 1747). See also Richard Wielebinski, Norbert Junkes, and Berndt H. Grahl: The Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope. Construction and Forty Years of Radio Astronomy. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 14/1 (2011), 3â21. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011JAHH...14....3W. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
Leverington, Observatories and Telescopes, 2017, 438â444. Peter G. Mezger: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan, Bonn, November 22, 1973. Transcript. NRAO Archives, http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_mezger_1973.shtml. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Peter G. Mezger: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan, Bonn, November 22, 1973. Transcript. NRAO Archives, http://www.nrao.edu/archives/Sullivan/sullivan_transcript_mezger_1973.shtml. Last accessed 1/4/2019. Baars, International Radio Telescope Projects, 2013.
Klaus Jäger: Schwarzschild-Medaille der Astronomischen Gesellschaft für Richard Wielebinski. idw-Informationsdienst Wissenschaft, 9/5/2017. https://idw-online.de/de/news680475. Last accessed 4/12/2018. For more on Wielebinskiâs early life and career, see Michael Globig: Zur Person. Richard Wielebinski. Max Planck Forschung 4 (2001), 98â103. For an overview of the main observational results see Wielebinski, Junkes, and Grahl, Effelsberg 100-m Radio Telescope, 2011, 3â21. See also Richard Wielebinski: Reminiscences of a Radio Astronomer. Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 24/4 (2021), 1103â1122. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021JAHH...24.1103W. Last accessed 1/13/2022.
For a general history of the Institute for Optical Astronomy, see Lemke, Himmel über Heidelberg, 2011, Vol. 21. Documents related to the founding of the Institute can be found in AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 66, No. 365, 366, 375; Rep. 62, No. 447. Max Planck Society plasma physicists, including Biermann as well as Lüst, played a fundamental role in promoting the foundation of the Institute for Astronomy and the Institute for Radio Astronomy. Biermann had come in contact with radio astronomy already during the war, when he worked at Babelsberg Observatory. They invited Kurt Fränz, a pioneer of German radio astronomy, with whom he discussed early radio observations at a time when astronomers were far from being interested in the potential of radio waves for astronomy. Biermann, in particular, was interested in the propagation of radio waves through a plasma. Ludwig Biermann: interview by Woodruff T. Sullivan III, September 15, 1978. Transcript. NRAO Archives, https://www.nrao.edu/archives/items/show/896. Last accessed 2/4/2022. See also Biermannâs memorandum on âDeutsche Südsternwarteâ dated April 28, 1966, mentioning the importance of astronomy and research on quasars for the large-scale structure of the Universe and the questions on the structure of space and the nature of gravitation written when relativistic astrophysics was already becoming an established and quickly developing field, on the verge of exploding in connection with the upcoming breakthrough discovery of pulsars (AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 66, No. 367, Fol. 283â287). This folder also contains general material related to the activities of the Institute for Astronomy and discussions on the establishment of ESO and the Calar Alto and Chile observatories.
Voigt et al., Denkschrift Astronomie, 1962. For early drafts of this Denkschrift, see AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 66, No. 365, 375.
Gotthard Gambke, Rudolf Kerscher, and Walter Kertz: Denkschrift zur Lage der Weltraumforschung. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag 1961.
For example, the scientific committee on research satellites in 1964 was already dominated by Max Planck interests, as it included Reimar Lüst from the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, and Bartels and Ehmert from the Institute for Aeronomy. In addition to Elsässer, who would soon become a Max Planck Institute director himself, the other two members were Martin Paetzold from Cologne and Fränz from Ulm. See Johannes Weyer: Akteurstrategien und strukturelle Eigendynamiken. Raumfahrt in Westdeutschland 1945â1965. Göttingen: Schwartz 1993. 297.
Zeiss Oberkochen played a major role in the rivalry between East and West Germany, as it had been established by members of Zeiss Jena invited to migrate to the American sector at the end of the war. The two companies competed in many fields throughout the Cold War, and Zeiss Jena even continued to provide optical telescopes and parts for West German observatories. The 1962 Denkschrift emphasizes the need for national telescopes in West Germany to also gain supremacy in a field where East Germans still had the upper hand. See Voigt et al., Denkschrift Astronomie, 1962. See also Armin Hermann: Und trotzdem Brüder. Die deutsch-deutsche Geschichte der Firma Carl Zeiss. München: Piper 2002.
This episode is recounted in Hans Elsässer: Weltall im Wandel. Die neue Astronomie. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 1989.
The Max Planck Societyâs budgets, which are a good indicator of which units are considered independent sub-institutes, listed a Department for Extraterrestrial Astronomy during the 1970s. Ultimately, however, the Society was at the time moving toward unitary institutes with collegiate membership and this unit was reabsorbed into the unitary budget of the institute. AMPG: Haushaltspläne: II. Abt. Rep 69.
See Chapter 4.
See Baars, International Radio Telescope Projects, 2013, 150â152. The observatory, still under construction was destroyed during the war with Iran.
Markus Voelter: Once You Start Asking. Insights, Stories and Experiences from Ten Years of Reporting on Science and Engineering, 2020, 278â281.
Blaauw, ESOâs Early History, 1991.
Seiler, Kommandosache, 2007., 225. For example, when working as a visiting researcher at the Yerkes Observatory in Chicagoâwhich under Otto Struveâs direction in the 1930s and 1940s had become the main center of astrophysics in the USâKiepenheuer was allowed to stay in the boarding house there together with researchers from other nations. Heckmann in contrast, due to his designation by Gerard Kuiper as having been loyal to the Third Reich, had to find private accommodations instead.
John Krige, presentation at the Workshop âOpening New Windows on the Cosmos: Astronomy and Astrophysics in the History of the Max Planck Society,â Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, September 6â8, 2016. Research Program History of the Max Planck Society, 2017, 98â101.
Blaauw, ESOâs Early History, 1991.
See, for example, Lodewijk Woltjer: Europeâs Quest for the Universe. ESO and the VLT, ESA and Other Projects. Les Ulis: EDP Sciences 2006, 92â93.
Lemke, Himmel über Heidelberg, 2011, Vol. 21, 31. Heckmannâs signed approval was needed for the institute and observatories, and Reimar Lüst had to do extraordinary diplomatic work to obtain it.
Blaauw, ESOâs Early History, 1991, 8.
The esoâcern joint venture at the time was also instrumental in creating the first occasions where astroparticle physicsâthe new emerging discipline encompassing particle physics, cosmology, and astrophysicsâcould find a dedicated common space for discussion. Giancarlo Setti, and LeÌon van Hove (eds.): Large-Scale Structure of the Universe, Cosmology and Fundamental Physics. First ESO-CERN Symposium, CERN, Geneva, 21â25 November 1983. Proceedings. Garching: European Southern Observatory 1984. Giancarlo Setti, and LeÌon van Hove (eds.): Cosmology, Astronomy and Fundamental Physics. Second ESO-CERN Symposium, ESO, Garching Bei München, 17â21 March 1986. Proceedings. Garching: European Southern Observatory 1986. The first international school on astroparticle physics, organized in conjunction with the eso-cern symposia on cosmology and fundamental physics, was held at the âEttore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture,â in Erice, Sicily, January 5â25, 1987. See also Christine Sutton: ESO and CERN: A Tale of Two Organizations. CERN Courier 52/8 (2012), 26â30. https://cds.cern.ch/record/1734856. Last accessed 5/4/2020.
Blaauw, ESOâs Early History, 1991, 9.
Immo Appenzeller: interview by Juan-Andres Leon, August 2016. In fact, the technical expertise required to work with astronomical instruments in the early years of the MPIA/the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy continued to be provided by personnel from the neighboring state observatory (Landessternwarte).
Leverington, Observatories and Telescopes, 2017. The ntt had an altazimuth mount and was equipped with active optics to counteract the deformations of the system caused by gravity on very large telescopes. Both these innovations allowed the telescopes to be much lighter and, consequently, less expensive. Altazimuth mounts had been the standard in radio astronomy since the 1960s, and the concept of active optics is the optical equivalentâmuch more difficult to implementâof what Sebastian von Hoerner had suggested with his homologous design in radio telescopes. For these reasons, a former director of eso informally referred to Calar Alto as the âlast renaissance telescope.â
Claus Madsen: The Jewel on the Mountaintop. The European Southern Observatory through Fifty Years. ESO 2012.
For more on this rivalry and the mediating role of Reimar Lüst, see the interview with Lüst conducted by Jakob Staude, published in the Annual Report (Jahresbericht) of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, 2009, pp. 121â23.
In fact, the buildings of eso and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching (after this moved from Munich-Freimann) are neighbors, were built by the same company, and share the same architectural style. See Peter Gruss, Gunnar Klack, and Matthias Seidel (eds.): Fehling+Gogel. Die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft als Bauherr der Architekten Hermann Fehling und Daniel Gogel. Berlin: Jovis 2009.
See, for example, the Max Planck Societyâs budgets. The Effelsberg telescope was not even registered in the budgets, whereas the telescope funding of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) was registered as large project investment from the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology. For more details, see the Financial Appendix at the end of this book.
Kenneth Kellermann, and B. Sheets: Serendipitous Discoveries in Radio Astronomy. Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory Green Bank, West Virginia on May 4, 5, 6, 1983. Green Bank, WV: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Associated Universities 1983. http://library.nrao.edu/public/collection/02000000000280.pdf. Last accessed 3/21/2021.
Through their meticulous work and close involvement with their particular Max Planck Institutes, Institutsbetreuer (institute mentors), are the largest source of archival material for the AMPG. For every institute, there are meters and meters of their files (AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 66).
Gerhard Haerendel: History of EISCAT. Part 4. On the German Contribution to the Early Years of EISCAT. History of Geo- and Space Sciences 7/2 (2016), 67â72. doi:
For examples of mediation by Preiss, see Baars, International Radio Telescope Projects, 2013, 33, 65, 79. Preiss was a lawyer, so had been wise enough to include in the contracts with Zeiss, Man, and Krupp the provision that if, in the coming years, these companies should build telescopes based on those developed by the Max Planck Institutes, they would have to compensate the institutes for the original research and development costs incurred. This provision led to the collaboration on building observatories in Iraq mentioned in this chapter.
Till Kirsten: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Heidelberg, October 24â25, 2017. DA GMPG, BC 601051. Till Kirsten, personal collection of documents, DA GMPG, BC 600004, BC 600005.
William L. Kraushaar, and George W. Clark: Search for Primary Cosmic Gamma Rays with the Satellite Explorer XI. Physical Review Letters 8/3 (1962), 106â109. doi:
as&e had been founded in 1958 by Martin Annis, Rossiâs former student at MIT. Rossi was Chairman of the Board of Directors, which also included George W. Clark as a main scientific consultant of the Society. Rossi, who was not able to start such activity at Mit because his group was already too busy with the preparation of the solar probe and other commitments, notably the large cosmic ray shower array at Volcano Ranch, pushed toward the search for extra solar X-ray astronomy also because he hoped to redirect the companyâs activities toward more scientific and fundamental aims. Martin Annis: interview by Luisa Bonolis, Boston, MA, September 30, 2006.
Riccardo Giacconi et al.: Evidence for x Rays From Sources Outside the Solar System. Physical Review Letters 9/11 (1962), 439â443. doi:
Volker Schönfelder: The History of Gamma-Ray Astronomy. Astronomische Nachrichten 323/6 (2002), 524â529. doi:
Michelangelo De Maria: Europe in Space. Edoardo Amaldi and the Inception of ESRO. ESA-HSR-5. Noordwijk, the Netherlands: ESA Publications Division 1993. See also Lüst, The European Space Research Organization, 1965, 394â397.
Ludwig Biermann: Jahresberichte deutscher astronomischer Institute für 1961 München, Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik, Institut für Astrophysik. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 15 (1962), 68â74, 69. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1962MitAG..15...68. Last accessed 10/30/2018. The following year, in 1962, Lüst visited Caltech in Pasadena.
Luisa Bonolis: From Cosmic Ray Physics to Cosmic Ray Astronomy. Bruno Rossi and the Opening of New Windows on the Universe. Astroparticle Physics 53 (2014), 67â85. doi:
See report on the situation of space research in Germany written by Lüst in 1962, after his second stay in the US (AMPG, II. Abt. Rep. 66, No. 3048, Fol. 21â26).
As emphasized by Martin Harwit, âObservational discovery comes on the heels of technological innovation, giving physics an increasingly dominant role in astronomy.â Martin Harwit: Physicists and AstronomyâWill You Join the Dance? Physics Today 34/11 (1981), 172â187. doi:
Joachim Trümper: Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Max Planck Society. In: AndreÌ Heck (ed.): Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands 2004, 169â187, 75.
On preliminary work in view of the development of future devices for detection of X- and gamma rays from astrophysical sources, see the first annual report of the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (Tätigkeitsbericht 1963â1965 des Instituts für extraterrestrische Physik am Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik. MPI-PAE Extraterr. 1 (22/66), Januar 1966, 37â39), a copy of which can be found in BArch, B 196/7170. A scanned copy is available at http://www.mpe.mpg.de/303552/jb1963-1965.pdf. Last accessed 10/30/2018. The institute also announced a proposal on ultraviolet spectrophotometry for the detection of interstellar molecular hydrogen within an international collaboration planning the Large Astronomical Satellite (LAS), one of the first and main engagements of ESRO. See also R. Lüst, âMemorandum zur Weltraumforschungâ (June 1964) where the possibility of extraterrestrial observations of the whole electromagnetic spectrum is, of course, mentioned among the future space activities (AMPG, III. Abt., ZA 1, No. 91).
Klaus Pinkau to Luisa Bonolis, October 15, 2016.
See proposal âExtraterrestrial measurements of gamma-rays in the energy range above 50 MeVâ (February 1964), with group leader Reimar Lüst (Historical Archives of the European Union, S-78, COPERS-1236, https://archives.eui.eu/en/fonds/96556?item=COPERS-06.01-1236. Last accessed 6/20/2020).
Larger-scale research on gamma ray astronomy began with the arrival of Klaus Pinkau at the institute on December 1, 1965. Ludwig Biermann, and Reimar Lüst: Jahresberichte astronomischer Institute für 1965, München Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik, Institute für Astrophysik und extraterrestrische Physik. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 20 (1966), 67â79. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1966MitAG..20...66. Last accessed 10/30/2018. For material related to research activity of the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in the 1960s see AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 145, No. 230, 293, 771, 772, 773, 872, 874, 875, 887, 911, 992. Pinkau was also in charge of cosmic-ray research.
See Pinkauâs publications up to 1966. Bagge had been visiting the United Kingdom in 1951 and had discussed the problem of cosmic rays with Powell and Patrick M. Blackett, the most influential UK scientists in the field, both Nobel laureates (Bagge to Biermann, March 30, 1951, AMPG, III. Abt., ZA 1, No. 1). At the end of the 1940s, heavy nuclei had been discovered to be a component of cosmic rays. Moreover, the recent discovery of the pion in cosmic rays by Powellâs group with improved nuclear emulsions had solved a longstanding problem of cosmic ray research, contributing to the beginning of modern particle physics. Owing to his scientific interests, Bagge was fond of measurement methods and measurement techniques, and had developed in his institute a spark chamber with very fast rise time, important for short-term measurements, and now wanted to introduce the nuclear emulsions as part of his âcollection of measurement techniquesâ (Klaus Pinkau: Interview by Helmuth Trischler, March 9, 2010. Transcript, Historical Archives of the European Union, Oral History of Europe in Space Collection, from now on HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT072. Last accessed 1/4/2019). In 1954 Pinkau had been given a fellowship to go abroad, and thus Bagge asked him to go to Bristol, work with Powellâs group, and learn the nuclear emulsion technique. Pinkau remained in Bristol from 1955 to 1960 and worked there on his Master and PhD theses. At that time, âthe hunt for new particles using the nuclear emulsion technique was nearing its end. What remained was the study of heavy and highly charged cosmic rays, and high energy interactionsâthe so-called âjets.â Also, there were a number of âsoft cascades,â purely electromagnetic cascades that originated from high energy gamma rays that had entered the emulsion stack from outside as part of a large cosmic ray shower. No one had shown an interest to analyze them, and the entire material available was given to me as my field of work.â Pinkau formulated a theory for the lateral distribution of cascade electrons which allowed the energy of primaries generating the shower to be determined. This work became his PhD thesis (Klaus Pinkau to Luisa Bonolis, October 15, 2016). This allowed the Bristol group to use simple methods to determine the energies of the gamma rays originating in high-energy nuclear interactions arising from the neutral pion decay. Klaus Pinkau: Energy Determination of Electromagnetic Cascades in Nuclear Emulsions. The Philosophical Magazine: A Journal of Theoretical Experimental and Applied Physics 2/23 (1957), 1389â1392. doi:
Hannes AlfveÌn, and Nicolai Herlofson: Cosmic Radiation and Radio Stars. Physical Review 78/5 (1950), 616â616. doi:
As mentioned in Chapter 1, Fermi had used AlfveÌnâs theory of magnetohydrodynamic waves in plasmas to suggest a mechanism for the acceleration of cosmic rays by galactic magnetic fields embedded in plasma clouds. Enrico Fermi: On the Origin of the Cosmic Radiation. Physical Review 75/8 (1949), 1169â1174. doi:
Philip Morrison: On Gamma-Ray Astronomy. Il Nuovo Cimento 7/6 (1958), 858â865. doi:
The first cosmic gamma ray burstsâextremely energetic explosions, in fact, the brightest electromagnetic events known to occur in the Universeâwere actually identified in the late 1960s/early 1970s from data recorded in the mid-1960s by the Vela satellites designed to detect gamma radiation pulses emitted by high-altitude nuclear detonations, a program initiated to verify the Limited Test Ban Treaty, banning nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water. Ray W. Klebesadel, Ian B. Strong, and Roy A. Olson: Observations of Gamma-Ray Bursts of Cosmic Origin. Astrophysical Journal 182 (1973), L85âL88. doi:
Morrison, On Gamma-Ray Astronomy, 1958, 858â865.
See the joint proposal âMulti-purpose detector for the study of electromagnetic and nuclear eventsâ (December 1965), by the University of Milan, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre (Historical Archives of the European Union, S-111, ESRO-5938, https://archives.eui.eu/en/fonds/142993?item=ESRO-5938. Last accessed 6/20/2020). Reimar Lüst, and Klaus Pinkau: Theoretical Aspects of Celestial Gamma-Rays. In: J.C. Emming (ed.): Electromagnetic Radiation in Space. Proceedings of the Third ESRO Summer School in Space Physics, Held in Alpbach, Austria, from 19 July to 13 August, 1965. Dordrecht: Springer 1967, 231â248.
See, for example, one of the last articles written by Pinkau in 1965 before moving to the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics: Klaus Pinkau et al.: Balloon Experiment Using Spark Chambers and an Ionization Spectrometer. Proceedings of the 9th International Cosmic Ray Conference. London, UK. 1965, 821â823. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1965ICRC....2..821P. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
This traditional and experimental group is jokingly referred to as the âKiel Mafiaâ (Joachim Trümper: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Munich, August 7â8, 2017. DA GMPG, BC 601036).
See also Pinkau, The Early Days, 1996, 43â47.
Klaus Pinkau to Luisa Bonolis, October 17, 2016. The Caravane Collaboration included a group of European research laboratories (Netherlands, Italy, Germany, France) that took responsibility for designing the large gamma-ray telescope for the satellite COS-B.
Klaus Pinkau to Luisa Bonolis, October 17, 2016. For an overview of developments and research activities during the period from 1965, when Pinkau arrived, up to 1975, see Pinkauâs Report âDas Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik, seine Planungsuberlegungen und Prioritäten im Jahre 1975,â containing many graphs related to internal developments, from staff to publications to age statistics, including the number of projects over the years (AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 26, No. 6). By the early 1970s, Pinkau had become so influential that Herbert Friedman, one of the most eminent US space scientists and member of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences, invited him to be one of the 10â12 members of an international space science advisory group that should âoperate on an international scale, bringing together scientists to focus on and survey cooperatively the problems, the opportunities, and the implications of space research, and to find ways to foster and promote wise and vigorous international scientific programs.â At that time, it was becoming apparent that âthe development and conduct of major space research programs will depend to a large extent on the pooling of national budgetary, scientific and technological resources. The scientific and technological gap which once existed between the launching and non-launching nations has been steadily closing to a point where the basis for significant expansion of cooperative programs is attractive and necessary to maintain viable space research programs.â Herbert Friedmann to Klaus Pinkau, 12.13.1973, AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 145, No. 230.
AMPG, III. Abt., ZA 1, No. 91. See also p. 30 in Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics, Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Report 1963â1965, MPI-PAE Extraterr. 22/66, January 1966, available at http://www.mpe.mpg.de/303552/jb1963-1965.pdf. Last accessed 4/22/2020.
As in the case of Gentner at cern a decade earlier, instrumental expertise was the best way for German researchers to find senior roles in European collaborations.
K. Bennett et al.: Preliminary Results from the European Space Agencyâs COS-B Satellite for Gamma-Ray Astronomy. NASA
Conference Publication 2 (1977), 27. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/?#abs/1977NASCP...2...27B. Last accessed 11/20/2018. Wim Hermsen: COS-B Views on the Diffuse Galactic Gamma-Ray Emission and Some Point Sources. Space Science Reviews 49/1 (1989), 17â39. doi:
Klaus Pinkau: Interview by Helmuth Trischler, March 9, 2010. Transcript, Historical Archives of the European Union, Oral History of Europe in Space Collection (from now on HAEU), https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT072. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Pierre Encrenaz et al.: Highlighting the History of French Radio Astronomy. 7. The Genesis of the Institute of Radioastronomy at Millimeter Wavelengths (IRAM). Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 14/2 (2011), 83â92. http://www.narit.or.th/en/files/2011JAHHvol14/2011JAHH...14...83E.pdf. Last accessed 10/30/2018. See also minutes of the commission âBerufungsvorschläge für die Leitung des geplanten deutsch-französischen Millimeterwellen-Instituts of May 12, 1977 (AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68 A, No. 149).
Richard Wielebinski: The Development of Radio Astronomy from Metre to Sub-mm Wavelengths. Acta Cosmologica 23/2 (1997), 53â58. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1997AcC....23...53W. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
For a reconstruction of the development of X-ray astronomy in Germany, see Simone Jüngling: Röntgenastronomie in Deutschland. Entstehungsgeschichte, Institutionalisierung und instrumentelle Entwicklungen. Hamburg: Verlag Dr. KovacÌ 2007. Joachim Trümper: The History of X-Ray Astronomy in Germany. Memorie Della SocietaÌ Astronomica Italiana 84 (2013), 493â500. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013MmSAI..84..493T. Last accessed 5/11/2018. See also Riccardo Giacconi: History of X-Ray Telescopes and Astronomy. Experimental Astronomy 25/1â3 (2009), 143â156. doi:
The role and impact of Baggeâs cosmic ray group for the Max Planck Society will be further outlined in Chapter 5.
J. M. Comella et al.: Crab Nebula Pulsar NP 0532. Nature 221/5179 (1969), 453â454. doi:
Joachim Trümper: interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, March 18, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT076. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Trümper himself has described his path from cosmic ray physics to X-ray astronomy: âThat fascinated me and I started working on pulsar models. Between 1967 and 1970, I gradually switched from nuclear physics to astrophysics [â¦] In connection with my reflections on neutron stars (pulsars) I had made the plan to do X-ray astronomy. This became possible with the appointment to Tübingen. In 1971, we began to build up X-ray astronomy, initially with a balloon program that we were able to realize with the help of the German Research Foundation. A first highlight was the discovery of cyclotron resonance lines in the X-ray spectrum of the neutron star Hercules X-1, with which the magnetic field of a neutron star could be measured for the first time.â Joachim Trümper: interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, March 18, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT076. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
R. Giacconi et al.: An X-Ray Scan of the Galactic Plane from UHURU. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 165 (1971), L27âL35. doi:
Ludwig Biermann, and Reimar Lüst: Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysik. Institut für Astrophysik und Institut für extraterrestrische Physik. Mitteilungen der Astronomischen Gesellschaft 29 (1971), 86â112, 86. http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1971MitAG..29...86B. Last accessed 10/30/2018.
Joachim Trümper: interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, March 18, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT076. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
Trümper was appointed Scientific Member and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in 1974 (CPTS meeting minutes of 26/06/1963, 23/10/1963, 15/02/1964, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1969, 1970, 1971).
Interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, March 18, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT076. Last accessed 1/4/2019.
J. Trümper et al.: Evidence for Strong Cyclotron Line Emission in the Hard X-Ray Spectrum of Hercules X-1. The Astrophysical Journal Letters 219 (1978), L105âL110. doi:
The path to ROSAT has been widely described in Bernd Aschenbach, Hermann-Michael Hahn, and Joachim Trümper: The Invisible Sky. Rosat and the Age of X-Ray Astronomy. New York, NY: Springer 1998, 37â41. See also Joachim Trümper, Bernd Aschenbach, and Heinrich Brauninger: Development Of Imaging X-Ray Telescopes At Max-Planck-Institut Garching. Proc.
SPIE
0184, Space Optics Imaging X-Ray Optics Workshop, (9 August 1979). Space OpticsâImaging XâRay Optics Workshop. 1979, 12â19. doi:
Joachim Trümper: interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, March 18, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT076. Last accessed 5/8/2019.
In this regard, Trümper added that his scientific life was made to 65â70 per cent of national activities, first balloon and rocket experiments and, later, the big Rosat project; about 30 percent of activities with Esa (Exosat and later Xmm-Newton, the X-Ray Multi-Mirror Mission named after Isaac Newton); the same with Nasa (Chandra and later Swift). Then there were bi-national collaborations with, for example, the Italian satellite BeppoSAX or the Soviet space station Mir. Joachim Trümper: interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, Munich, March 18, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT076. Last accessed 12/4/2020.
See also Joachim Trümper: X-Ray Astronomy in Europe. In: T.D. Guyenne, and B. Battrick (eds.): Twenty Years of the ESA Convention. Proceedings of an International Symposium, Held at Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany, 4â6 September 1995. Paris: European Space Agency 1995, 85â88. https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995ESASP.387...85T. Last accessed 4/23/2019.
The ROSAT Bright Source Catalogue paper derived from the all-sky survey performed during the first half year (1990â91) of the ROSAT mission, cataloguing 18,811 sources, represented both the culmination of the ROSAT projectâs primary aim of surveying the whole sky at X-ray wavelengths with an unprecedented sensitivity, as well as a major step forward in our knowledge of the X-ray sky. W. Voges et al.: The ROSAT All-Sky Survey Bright Source Catalogue. Astronomy and Astrophysics 349/2 (1999), 389â405. http://cdsads.u-strasbg.fr/abs/1999A%26A...349..389V. Last accessed 10/21/2018. This paper was included in the special issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics celebrating the journalâs first 40 years of publishing papers with a strong impact on the scientific community. Prominent members of the global astronomical community were asked to comment on the context in which these papers first appeared and the advances they had brought to their fields. M. G. Watson: ROSATâs View of the X-Ray Sky. Commentary on: Voges W., Aschenbach B., Boller Th., et al., 1999, A&A, 349, 389. Astronomy & Astrophysics 500/1 (2009), 581â582. doi:
X-Raying the Universe. 6. Nature Astronomy 4/6 (2020), 549â549. doi:
A. Merloni et al.: eROSITA Science Book. Mapping the Structure of the Energetic Universe. arXiv:1209.3114 [Astro-Ph.HE], 2012. http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.3114. Last accessed 11/21/2018. Andrea Merloni, Kirpal Nandra, and Peter Predehl: eROSITAâs X-Ray Eyes on the Universe. Nature Astronomy, 2020, 1â3. doi:
The Max Planck Societyâs budget (see Financial Appendix), which is a good indicator of which units are considered independent sub-institutes, listed a Department for Extraterrestrial Astronomy in the early 1970s. Ultimately, however, the Society was at the time moving toward unitary institutes with collegiate membership and this unit was re-absorbed into the unitary budget of the institute.
Built in 1980, under the direction of Heinrich Bräuninger, PANTER is a 123 m long vacuum tube of 1 m diameter, with an X-ray source system and a 12 m long test chamber of 3.5 m diameter. No more than 3â4 people are needed to operate this powerful tool, so direct and easy access for any kind of test was assured during all phases of Rosat hardware development: âFor the rosat mission we had years of âPANTER time.â We have tested the mirrors and also all the instruments to death!â Trümper also recalled that he always insisted: âDo not tell me that it works in principle. We have to test that it works....â Joachim Trümper: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Berlin, May 6â7, 2019. For a history of PANTER, see the album dedicated to Joachim Trümper: Eine kleine grosse Welt, July 24, 2001 (DA GMPG, BC 600003). We are particularly grateful to Joachim Trümper for allowing us an opportunity to consult such a special volume.
In the early 1960s, all scientific directors in the cosmic sciences researched in the traditions of cosmochemistry and plasma physics, and they were within ânuclearâ institutes, except for Biermannâs Institute for Astrophysics. By the time of Lüstâs presidency, in addition to the continued presence in plasma physics and cosmochemistry, there were already two entire Max Planck Institutes dedicated to observational astronomy (radio, millimeter, infrared, and optical wavelengths), plus the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, which had a footing in space-based gamma astronomy. Biermannâs own Institute for Astrophysics was also expanding rapidly into relativistic astrophysics, as is described in detail in Chapter 5. For an overview of the Max Planck Society in the early 1970s, in coincidence with the turning point also marked by a change in the presidency, see M.R. Hoare: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft: A Model for âSmall Scienceâ? Nature 237/5352 (1972), 206â209. doi:
As we will see in the next section, one of the criticisms wielded against the Institute for Aeronomy was its lack of theoretical guidance, itself the result of a tradition dating back to Erich Regener in Weissenau, most of whose teams were apprentices with little or no contact with the broader scientific community, unlike the scale seen at other Max Planck Institutes. Aeronomy was, however, a weak institute in contrast to the fledging new astronomical initiatives.
Personal accounts of the choleric disposition of both Elsässer and Mezger are an integral part of the MPG mythology.
Jacob W. M. Baars: Interview by Juan-Andres Leon, Bonn, February 5â7, 2018. DA GMPG, BC 601050. Conversations with Reimar Lüst during the Roundtable âAstronomy and Astrophysics in the History of the Max Planck Society.â See also Baars, International Radio Telescope Projects, 2013.
See, for example, Joachim Trümper: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Munich, August 7â8, 2017. DA GMPG, BC 601036.
See, for example, Biermann Papers, AMPG, III. Abt., ZA1, Folder 18. Letters from Gentner to (MPG Secretary) Schneider (20.12.1967), Lüst and Biermann to Gentner (8.3.1968), and Gentner to Schneider (25.3.1968).
Kenneth I. Kellermann: interview by Woodruff Sullivan III. March 19, 1975. NRAO, https://www.nrao.edu/archives/items/show/14994. Last accessed 1/26/2022. In this interview, he hints at having had a tense relationship with Mezger dating from their time together at Green Bank.
Roland Gredel: Guido Münch (1921â2020). Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, 5/4/2020. http://www.mpia.de/aktuelles/mpia-news/2020-05-04-muench-en. Last accessed 8/16/2020. See also Guido Munch: interview by David DeVorkin, 7 July 1977, Transcript, AIP, https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/4789. Last accessed 3/21/2021.
Lemke, Himmel über Heidelberg, 2011, Vol. 21, 120â121.
From the mid-1980s, the budget of all the exclusively astrophysical institutes stabilized at around 8 percent of the MPG/Max Planck Society budget, whereby this figure rises to about 24 percent, if one adds the âouter bounds,â i.e., all other institutes with some activity in astrophysics (MPP, MPIK, Aeronomy, but not IPP). The âactualâ figure in astrophysics is somewhere between the two. For more details, see the Financial Appendix.
A commission to appoint Bartelsâ successor was established in early June 1964 (CPTS meeting minutes of 09.06.1964, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1743). Discussions on the future of his Institute for Stratospheric Physics, one of the two branches of the Institute for Aeronomy, involved more in general the future of the institute itself. In parallel with the necessity of getting rid of well-worn research topics and most of its data-taking of a purely monitoring nature, one main weakness of the institute was related to its theoretical expertise. The appointments of Ian Axford as director, of Vytenis Vasyliunas as a member and of Jules A. Fejer as an external member provided the institute with a powerful theoretical potential which could enable it to fully exploit experiments such as Sousy (SOUnding SYstem for atmospheric structure and dynamics), Ionospheric Heating experiments, Eiscat, the two Helios missions, beyond merely data collection. Documentation regarding the Institute for Aeronomy crisis is extensive and ubiquitous in the correspondence of scientific members of the Max Planck Society. A starting point is the CPTS meeting minutes reporting decisions of the committees in charge of the appointments of directors and scientific members, as well as discussions about the future of the institute: âErnennung von Prof. v. Zahn zum WM und Direktor des MPI für Aeronomie,â âZukunft d. MPI f. Aeronomie/Ernennung Haerendel z. WM u. Direktor/Gründung MPI f. Meteorologie/Ernennung Vasyliunas z. WMâ (CPTS meeting minutes of 08.02.1973, 26.06.1973, 15.02.1974, 18.06.1974, 25.10.1974, 09.05.1979, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1768, 1769, 1771, 1772, 1773, 1787); âErnennung von Dr. H. Rosenbauer zum WM, Mitglied d. Kollegiums und Direktor am Institut des MPI für Aeronomieâ (CPTS meeting minutes of 16.11.1976, 08.03.1977, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1779, 1780). A collection of documents on this problem can also be found in personal papers of leading figures such as Gentner (AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68 A, No. 153, No. 157).
The committee was formed in 1968 in order to find âeither a theoretical or experimental physicistâ (CPTS meeting minutes of 04.11.1968, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1754), but after a whole year no decision had been taken (CPTS meeting minutes of 07.11.1969, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1757).
In the folder âZukunft des Instituts für Physik im Max-Planck-Institut für Physik und Astrophysikâ of Heisenbergâs papers, see Victor Weisskopf to Gentner, 4.11.1968, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 437. Since 1952, Wolfgang Paul was Professor at the University of Bonn and Director of the Physics Institute. In the late 1950s, he had built a 500 MeV electron synchrotron at the University of Bonn, the first strong-focusing machine operating in Europe, followed in 1965 by 2500 MeV synchrotron; in 1957, together with Willibald Jentschke and Wilhelm Walcher, had founded Desy in Hamburg and had always been in close contact with Cern, also as director of the nuclear physics division (1964â67), as member and later chairman of the Scientific Policy Committee and scientific delegate of Germany in the CernâCouncil. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1989 for the development of the ion trap technique. Ewald Paul: 50 Years of Experimental Particle Physics in Bonn. A Personal Recollection. European Physical Journal H 38/4 (2013), 471â506. doi:
Heisenberg to Weisskopf, 13.11.1969, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 437.
As of that date, Gentner became president of the new commission (CPTS meeting minutes of 10.06.1970, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1759). On the work of the commission for the future of the Institute for Physics and Astrophysics see also AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 375.
In July 1971, Van Hove accepted the appointment (Van Hove to Butenandt, July 15, 1971; Butenandt to Van Hove, June 30, 1971, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 437, Fol. 22, 25), and in August he offered Haim Harariâthen at the Department of Nuclear Physics of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israelâa position as theoretical physicist at the Max Planck Institute: âThe Instituteâs directorate is indeed very keen to have your advice also on the question of other appointments and some policy matters.â But it was Harariâs firm intention to remain in Israel and for this reason had not accepted other offers abroad, as he explained in his answer of early September: âI therefore cannot accept your kind invitation. Concerning our discussion of other possible candidatesâmy feeling is that the only way to attract top level people would be to organize a âsemesterâ or a one-year session at the Max Planck Institute and to simultaneously invite several excellent people together with a group of younger physicists to spend this time at that Institute. If a group including, say [Maurice] Jacob, [Albert] Schmid, [Giuliano] Preparata, [Holger] Nielsen, [Henry] Abarbanel, [Philip] Phillips, [Dieter] Schildnecht, [Louis] Michel, [Marco] Ademollo, [Jacques] Weyers, or any similar combination would agree to spend a semester or a year there it could give the place a tremendous push and will put it again on the physics map of the world [emphasis added]. Only such a shock treatment could help, as far as I can see from my distant observation point, and if the funds are available and the invitations to such a group of people can be sufficiently attractive, it may work.â Van Hove to Harari, 23.08.1971 and Harari to Van Hove, 05.09.1971, Cern Archives, CERN-ARCH-SIS-095.
CPTS meeting minutes of 23.06.1971, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1762. Van Hove had also proposed to invite Gerd Buschhorn as a new experimental physicist at the Institute, also in agreement with suggestions from the committee to reinforce the experimental group (Van Hove to Gentner, June 16, 1971, AMPG II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 437, Fol. 212). The final decision on both these questions was eventually announced in October 1971, approximately three years after the first official discussions about Heisenbergâs succession (CPTS meeting minutes of 22.10.1971, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1763).
CPTS meeting minutes of 22.10.1971, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1763. For the whole information on the work of the commission for the future of the Institute for Physics, see AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, N. 437.
As of April 1, 1973, Stodolsky began to work in Munich (CPTS meeting minutes of 22.04.1972, 02.11.1972, 26.06.1973, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1765, 1767, 1769). In the early 1980s, Stodolsky and his group became closely involved in the emerging field of of astroparticle physics (personal communication with Luisa Bonolis, May 8â16, 2017). He was especially interested in developing new types of instruments to investigate such topics as dark matter, or to detect exotic particles like axions from the Sun, at a time when a few particle physicists paid some attention to solar nuclear reactions because of the rising problem of the missing solar neutrinos in the expected flux from the Sun, a problem identified in Ray Davis experiment in U.S. The detection of solar neutrinos and related puzzles will be widely discussed in the final chapter.
Norbert Schmitz: LeÌon van Hove. 10.2.1924-2.9.1990. Berichte und Mitteilungen Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 1991, 99â102. See Reimar Lüst: LeÌon Van Hove and the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics. Scientific Highlights in Memory of LeÌon Van Hove. World Scientific 1993, 51â59.
Kippenhahn became a Scientific Member at the Institute for Astrophysics in 1963 (CPTS meeting minutes of 13/14.06.1963, 01.11.1963, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1741, 1742). The following year he became professor at the University of Göttingen, but continued his intense collaboration with Biermann.
CPTS meeting minutes of 23.10.1973, 15.02.1974, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1770, 1771.
See letters from Gentner to Adolf Butenandt of October 10â11, 1971, announcing his withdrawal as presidential candidate for health reasons (AGMG, III Abt. Rep 68 A, No. 138).
By the mid-1970s, when high-energy accelerator physics became more clearly the aim of dedicated laboratories in Europe, the question of a division of labor between the Institute for Physics and the Institute for Nuclear Physics in the realm of high- and low-energy physics was clearly outlined during a meeting of the âSenatsausschuss für Forschungspolitik und Forschungsplanungâ (Senate Committee on Research Policy and Research Planning) held on May 15, 1975 (AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68 A, No. 151). Otto Hahnâs Institute for Chemistry, which had a long tradition of accelerator-based nuclear physics, was included in the discussion. Gentner explained how Heidelberg had mainly dealt with low-energy physics, also extending studies of the structure of nuclei to higher energies. Research work had always been performed in collaboration with the local university. Gentner also expressed the opinion that a reduction of activities in Heidelberg, particularly in view of the retirement of Hermann Wäffler (Director of the Nuclear Physics Department of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz since 1959), was not justified. His proposal was to maintain low- and medium-energy physics in Heidelberg and high-energy physics in Munich, as had always been done previously.
According to Heinrich Völk, when Lüst became president of the Max Planck Society, Gentner established with him âa very intimate relationship. Interestingly because the relationship of Gentner with Heisenberg was not so intimate, but somehow Lüst and Gentner managed to get along very well [â¦].â Heinrich Völk: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Heidelberg, October 9â10, 2017. DA GMPG, BC 601037.
This is described, for example, in Erhard Keppler: Der Weg zum Max Planck Institut für Aeronomie. Von Regener bis Axfordâeine persönliche Rückschau. Katlenburg-Lindau: Copernicus 2003, 24â25. This impasse led to his initiative to build a separate antenna for communication with extraterrestrial probes in Weilheim, Bavaria, which is still in use to this day.
See Gentnerâs obituary in Präsidialbüro der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (ed.): Mitteilungen aus der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften. Heft 6/1970. München 1970, 346â348.
An initial attempt to replace Zähringer as leader of the Cosmochemistry Department was made in 1972 with Johannes Geiss (see Gentner to Butendandt, May 13, 1972, AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68A, W. Gentner Nachlass, No. 166/2-2). Geiss had been a pioneer in the field of isotope geochronology in the 1950s and during the 1960s had established a laboratory for extraterrestrial research at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern to study meteorites and samples of lunar soil also involved in measurements of the solar wind recorded by instruments of the Apollo mission on the moon. For this reason, he did not accept the offer (CPTS meeting minutes of 08.02.1973, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1768). A committee of experts including foreign members was formed who visited the Institute for Nuclear Physics (see also CPTES meeting minutes of 26.06.1973, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1769) as well as the Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and the Institute for Aeronomy, whose future was discussed at that same time. The final choice fell on Hugo Fechtig, but a further candidate was planned who should in particular tackle the theoretical aspects of cosmochemistry. On the subject of the future of cosmochemistry, Christian Junge remarked that the committee had recommended that both the groups in Heidelberg and Mainz should remain at the same level and that nothing in the organization of the two institutes should be changed. By early 1970s, the Cosmochemistry Department in Heidelberg included research groups working on cosmochronology and cosmic abundance of elements, interplanetary dust, mineralogy, geochemistry and chemistry of planetary material, physics and chemistry of the atmosphere. At the time, there were around 60 scientists working at the institute, 30 to 40 percent of them in cosmochemistry, and the rest in nuclear physics, solid state physics, and in the computer group (AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68A, No. 166/1-1, p. 3). During the first meeting of the ad hoc committee of the President of the Max Planck Society concerning the future of cosmochemistry in the Society held on March 12, 1973, it was general opinion that the cooperation between the Institute for Nuclear Physics and the Institute for Chemistry should be intensified. For a wide review on the research work carried on in the Heidelberg Cosmochemistry Department, see also AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68A, Folder No. 153.
No concrete decision had been taken about a successor to Gentner, and a committee to deal with this question was established. By 1974, around one-third of the research activities at the institute were dedicated to cosmochemistry and two-thirds to nuclear physics and associated fields. The Kollegium (collegial directorship) was in favor of appointing an experimental physicist, and the name of Bogdan Povh, who was already an External Scientific Member at the institute, was put forward (CPTS meeting minutes of 15.02.1974, 18.06.1974, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1771, 1772). Povh was a professor at the University of Heidelberg and his main research interests were nuclear and high-energy nuclear physics, which he pursued at Cern and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He had also already been in contact with various groups at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics. A final decision proposing appointing Povh a Scientific Member and member of the Kollegium was taken in October of that year (CPTS meeting minutes of 25.10.1974, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1773). A broad outline of research work conducted at the institute at the time of Gentnerâs retirement can be found in Jürgen Kiko, and Ulrich Schmidt-Rohr: Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik. Heidelberg. Edited by Generalverwaltung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. München 1975. See also the Festschrift/ commemorative book published after his death in 1980: Generalverwaltung der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft (ed.): Gedenkfeier Wolfgang Gentner. München 1981.
The long process of finding a solution after Panethâs death involved discussions on the very future of cosmochemistry at the Institute for Chemistry. The first choice fell on Hans Suess, who had collaborated on the shell model of the atomic nucleus with future winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Hans Jensen (CPTS meeting minutes of 02.06.1959, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1734). He had emigrated to the US in 1950, where, together with Nobel laureate Harold Urey, he had studied the abundance of elements in meteorites. He thus appeared to be the perfect candidate for this position, that Suess, however, was not ready to accept and so it appeared that it would not be possible to find an adequate successor to Paneth in the fields of research on meteorites and radiochemistry. In the following deliberations, the committee even decided to redirect research into organic or theoretical chemistry and move all meteorite research to Hintenbergerâs Department, but this met the disagreement of Karl Ziegler, as chemistry was already covered in other institutes (CPTS meeting minutes of 19.01.1961, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1736) and the successor was to focus on continuing the work of Paneth. Deliberations then focused on hiring the eminent physicist Rudolf Mössbauer, who plays an important role in several chapters of this book. It later transpired that there was a very low probability of Mössbauer accepting the position (CPTS meeting minutes of 01.11.1963, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1742). He did not in fact accept it and moved instead to the Technical University in Munich (CPTS meeting minutes of 09.06.1964, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1743). This unsolved problem of the directorship went on up to 1967â68 (CPTS meeting minutes of 07.04.1967, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1749), when, following Gentnerâs idea, a new research line was opened, calling upon Christian Junge who had the Chair of Meteorology at the University of Mainz (Dieter Hoffmann, and Ulrich Schmidt-Rohr (eds.): Wolfgang Gentner. Festschrift zum 100. Geburtstag. Berlin: Springer 2006, 50.). The new division was labeled âChemistry of the Atmosphereâ (CPTS meeting minutes of 23.02.1968, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1752). Over the years, decisions had also been taken to appoint Heinrich Hintenberger and Hermann Wäffler as independent Directors of the departments of mass spectroscopy and accelerator-based nuclear physics (CPTS meeting minutes of 02.06.1959, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1734) and Heinrich Wänke, who had worked with Paneth since the time they were both in UK, as the Scientific Member in charge of cosmochemistry (CPTS meeting minutes of 13/14.05.1963, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1741). On Panethâs group, see Ursula B. Marvin: Oral Histories in Meteoritics and Planetary Science. VIII. Friedrich Begemann. Meteoritics & Planetary Science 37/S12 (2002), B69âB77. doi:
Junge reorganized the institute into two departments: the first, led by Wänke, would conduct research on meteorites, the second, led by himself, would conduct research on chemistry of the atmosphere and isotopes (CPTS meeting minutes of 20.02.1969, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1758). Hintenbergerâs group continued separately until his retirement. Christian Junge: Die Entstehung der Erdatmosphäre und ihre Beeinflussung durch den Menschen. In: Generalverwaltung der Max-Planck Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e.V. (ed.): Max-Planck-Gesellschaft Jahrbuch 1975. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1975, 36â48. On Junge, see Paul J. Crutzen: Christian Junge. 2.7.1912-18.6.1996. Jahresbericht der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, 1996, 196â199. Ruprecht Jaenicke: Christian Junge. The Pioneer of Aerosol Chemistry. In: Sem J. Gilmore et al. (eds.): History & Reviews of Aerosol Science. Proceedings of the Second Symposium on the History of Aerosol Science, 13â14 October 2001, Portland, Oregon, USA. Reston: American Association for Aerosol Research 2005, 37â47. Ruprecht Jaenicke: Die Erfindung der Luftchemie. Christian Junge. In: Horst Kant, and Carsten Reinhardt (eds.): 100 Jahre Kaiser-Wilhelm-, Max-Planck-Institut für Chemie (Otto-Hahn-Institut). Facetten seiner Geschichte. Berlin: Archiv der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft 2012, 187â202. The long process to reform the MPIC is one of the focuses of Gregor Lax: Von der Atmosphärenchemie zur Erforschung des Erdsystems. Beiträge zur jüngeren Geschichte des Max-Planck-Instituts für Chemie (Otto-Hahn-Institut), 1959â2000. Berlin: GMPG-Preprint 2018.
An account of the cross-fertilization between nuclear weapons and climate science can be found in Paul N. Edwards: Entangled Histories. Climate Science and Nuclear Weapons Research. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 68/4 (2012), 28â40. doi:
A detailed account of the transition toward the atmospheric sciences in Mainz as well as these MPG-wide movements toward an Earth system or environmental sciences cluster are discussed in Lax, Von der Atmosphärenchemie zur Erforschung des Erdsystems, 2018.
See Karl Rawer: Meine Kinder umkreisen die Erde. Der Bericht eines Satellitenforschers. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder 1986, 58.
Herbert Palme: Cosmochemistry along the Rhine. Geochemical Perspectives 7/1 (2018), 1â116. doi:
Walther Dieminger, Alfred Ehmert, and Georg Pfotzer: Sonderheft Professor em. Dr. Walter Dieminger zum 70. Geburtstag am 7.7.1977. Ansprachen und Vorträge anlässlich seiner feierlichen Verabschiedung aus seinem Amt als Direktor des Max-Planck-Instituts für Aeronomie am 9. und 10.7.1975. Edited by Julius Bartels. Berlin: Springer 1977.
Report by the Visiting Committee to the Max-Planck Institut für Aeronomie, Lindau, Germany, July 2, 1973, AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68A, No. 153. The folder also includes reports on the activities of the Cosmochemistry Department in Heidelberg and current and future activities at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics.
See Reimar Lüst papers, travels in South Africa (AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 145, No. 76). Even though this was de facto surrendered in 1970s, the official transfer is dated January 1, 1985, in Eckart Henning, and Marion Kazemi: Chronik der Kaiser-Wilhelm-/Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften 1911â2011. Daten und Quellen. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2011.
During the committee meeting at the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy, Lindau/Harz of February 8, 1973, it was officially announced that Haerendel had communicated that he would not accept an appointment in Lindau (A. Weller to members of the committee âMax-Planck-Institut für Aeronomie, Linday/Harz,â April 18, 1973. AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 68A, No. 153, p. 2). The visiting committee previously mentioned had proposed Völk as a possible director at the Aeronomy Institute. Gerhard Haerendel had become a member of Lüstâs research group for extraterrestrial physics in October 1961, immediately after having completed his PhD on the Van Allen belts, with Schlüter as supervisor. He himself claims to have been the first in Germany to write his doctoral thesis on a topic related to space. He in fact became the âHaustheoretikerâ of the group and had a leading role in the first barium and ion cloud experiments, successfully testing the technique in 1964, and took decisions on the preparation of the payloads for experiments on plasma clouds, which were performed with sounding rockets as part of a national project with Esro, as a first step in preparation for subsequent participation in satellite experiments, the heos (Highly Eccentric Orbit Satellite) missions of 1969 and 1972. The ion cloud experiments continued to be his responsibility. A. Valenzuela et al.: The AMPTE Artificial Comet Experiments. Nature 320 (1986), 700â703. doi:
Klaus Pinkau: interview by Helmuth Trischler, March 9, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT072. Last accessed 5/8/2019.
Lax, Von der Atmosphärenchemie zur Erforschung des Erdsystems, 2018.
In this book we have several examples of prestigious foreign directors who stay a few years, and whose appointment coincides with radical reforms. The list includes LeoÌn Van Hove in Munich, Ken Kellermann in Bonn, and Steven Beckwith in Heidelberg. Other research clusters of the Max Planck Society have experienced a similar pattern. In the context of this book, Ian Axford in Lindau, and also Simon White in Garching (see next chapter), constitute exceptional cases who ended up staying permanently.
In a letter written on January 8, 1973 by Lüst to J. T. Jefferies (Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii), about the choice of speakers for a joint discussion on the âThe Solar Wind and its Interaction with the Interstellar Mediumâ at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) commission No. 43 (Plasmas and Magnetohydrodynamics in Astrophysics, of which Lüst was the president), the former emphasized that Axford was âprobably the most competent manâ to work in this field. His latest review on this topic was defined by Davis Leverett of Caltech (Leverett to Lüst, November 28, 1972) as âthe major paper on the subject that I have ever seen to dateâ (AMPG, III. Abt., Rep. 145, No. 957, Fol. 3 and 11). See also William Allan: Sir William Ian Axford. 2 January 1933â13 March 2010. Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 59 (2013), 5â31. doi:
CPTS meeting minutes of 08.02.1973, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1768. A decision was also taken to offer the post of director to Ulf von Zahn, but Zahn did not accept the offer and so a new committee of experts was formed (CPTS meeting minutes of 26.06.1973, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1769). In view of Ehmertâs retirement, which would soon be followed by Diemingerâs and Pfotzerâs, the possibility of reorganizing the Lindau institute in a move toward research in meteorology was also discussed. It was suggested that the topic should be examined by Christian Junge himself in a âMemorandum zur Lage der Meteorologie in Deutschlandâ and especially within the Max Planck Society (CPTS meeting minutes of 15.02.1974, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1771). In the following meeting of the Scientific Council, Axford is mentioned as having accepted the position as director at the institute and beginning his activities in July (CPTS meeting minutes of 18.06.1974, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1772). At the same time, Vasyliunas, a well-known theoretician from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was proposed as a Scientific Member, in response to the committeeâs proposal that a strong theoretical group should be created in order to establish a strong connection with the experimental groups (CPTS meeting minutes of 25.10.1974, 23.01.1975, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1773, 1774). Materials on the restructuring of the Institute for Aeronomy related to the years 1973â76 can be also found in AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 66, No. 60 and No. 61.
See CPTS meeting minutes of 16.11.1976, 08.03.1977, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1779, 1780. Rosenbauerâs arrival from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, with a strong experience in space missions (in particular, he had been principal investigator of the plasma experiment aboard the Helios solar probes) and related instrument building, is another example of the cultural influence of Biermannâs tradition extending up to the recent Rosetta mission to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in which Rosenbauer was responsible for the design and the scientific program of the lander Philae, which landed on the cometâs nucleus in 2014, and for one of the most important instruments on board Philae. J.-P. Bibring et al.: The Rosetta Lander (âPhilaeâ) Investigations. Space Science Reviews 128/1 (2007), 205â220. doi:
In 1981, Rosenbauer petitioned to call the Norwegian Tor Hagfors, a radio astronomer and radar expert, who had pioneered studies of the interactions between electromagnetic waves and plasma, later becoming founding director of the multinational EISCAT facility (CPTS meeting minutes of 21.05.1981, 27.10.1981, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1793, 1794). The EISCAT project, which had its roots in the work with ionosondes at the Institute for Aeronomy and the work with barium plasma clouds at the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics and which both institutes participated in, was instrumental also in relaunching the Institute for Aeronomy in the Axford era. Haerendel, History of EISCAT, Part 4, 2016, 67â72.
Keppler, Max Planck Institut für Aeronomie, 2003. In fact, he got on very well with Axford, but his relationship with people relocated from Munich such as Rosenbauer was always problematic, according to several episodes related to his interaction with Rosenbauer.
Gerhard Haerendel: interview by Helmuth Trischler and Matthias Knopp, April 9, 2010. Transcript, HAEU, https://archives.eui.eu/en/oral_history/INT066. Last accessed 5/8/2019. In 1984, Haerendel became the German national representative to the Committee on Space Research (Cospar), and was elected Cospar President replacing Ian Axford in 1994. See Haerendelâs Preface in Gerhard Haerendel et al. (eds.): 40 Years of Cospar. Noordwijk: ESA Publications Division 1998.
Even before the beginning of Lüstâs presidency, in order to reinforce the theoretical side of cosmochemistry, the committee proposed to call Heinrich Völk from the Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Munich. At the same time, a similar proposal had been put forward by the Institute for Aeronomy. The final choice was left to Völk and he decided to go to Heidelberg (CPTS meeting minutes of 08.02.1973, 26.06.1973, 23.10.1973, 15.02.1974, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771). Völkâs opinion was that Gentner was a bit afraid âthat his group would, so to say, narrow down too strongly, so that it would become a small appendix of this institute [for Nuclear Physics]. At the same time, there was a Cosmochemistry Department with many and very good chemists in Mainz, like Heinrich Wänke and so I think that Gentner wanted to get, so to say, access to space and all of these things. And so, somehow, they decided to ask me to come here, and start something more in the direction of astrophysics [â¦] I came here and I brought Gregor Morfill with me, who later went back to Garching and became finally also one of the directors there, at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, but he came with me originally. That was very nice, and so we did two things: one was just to generalize cosmic ray physics, because this had also to do with meteorite research [â¦] then we started working on solar system formation questions; which was totally new for me and, but we had a good idea of how one could form a protoplanetary disc out of a collapsing molecular cloud, which forms a central star and that disc around it and, hopefully, planets out of it, and so forthâ¦â Heinrich Völk: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Heidelberg, October 9â10, 2017. DA GMPG, BC 601037.
See, for example, Keppler, Max Planck Institut für Aeronomie, 2003, 35â40. Peter Czechowsky, and Rüdiger Rüster (eds.): 60 Jahre Forschung in Lindau. 1946â2006. Vom Fraunhofer-Institut zum Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung. Eine Sammlung von Erinnerungen. Katlenburg-Lindau: Copernicus 2007.
JaromıÌr Balcar: InstrumentenbauâPatentvermarktungâAusgründungen. Die Geschichte der Garching Instrumente GmbH. Berlin: GMPG-Preprint 2018.
Encrenaz et al., The Genesis of the IRAM, 2011, 83â92.
A disappointment stemming largely from the overblown expectations of thermonuclear fusion in the 1950s and 1960s. By the late 1960s, it was evident that the path to a thermonuclear power reactor, even if successful, would take many decades.
The appointment process can be followed in CPTS meeting minutes of 16.11.1976, 29.10.1980, 21.01.1981, 21.05.1981, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1779, 1791, 1792, 1793.
Joachim Trümper: interview by Luisa Bonolis and Juan-Andres Leon, Munich, August 7â8, 2017. DA GMPG, BC 601036.
Reimar Lüst: interview by Horst Kant and Jürgen Renn, Hamburg, May 18, 2010, DA GMPG, ID 601068.
See CPTS meeting minutes of 29.10.1980, AMPG, II. Abt., Rep. 62, No. 1791, reporting discussion on the continuation of the gravitational-wave experiment of Billingâs Department at the Institute for Astrophysics.