Kirkwood would see no gaps in IUB's astronomy program

By Susan Williams

Photo courtesy of IU Archives
Kirkwood

Since 1985, Frank Edmondson, professor emeritus of astronomy at IU Bloomington, and his wife, Margaret, now deceased, contributed regularly to an endowment fund for establishing a Kirkwood professorship or chair. In 2000, Edmondson completed the professorship through a charitable gift annuity. Later the same year, an anonymous donor added funds to double the endowment, converting the professorship to a fully endowed chair. It also created another endowment in support of the WIYN Observatory in Arizona.

IU is a founding member of the WIYN consortium which designed, constructed and is now using the facility at Kitt Peak, about 50 miles southwest of Tucson. In August, Catherine Pilachowski came to IU from the WIYN Observatory to become professor of astronomy and holder of the Kirkwood Chair of astronomy.

The Kirkwood Observatory was built in 1900, and plans to honor its 100th anniversary include the current sprucing. A professional historical renovation contractor is doing the work to guarantee the preservation of a 1900-1950 look and feel.

The Kirkwood Chair, the observatory and the avenue east of the Old Crescent area of the Bloomington campus all are named for Daniel Kirkwood, the most distinguished astronomer to be associated with IU. Kirkwood was professor of mathematics at IU from 1856 until he retired in 1886. In 1861, he suggested that meteor showers are the debris of disintegrated comets. But the gaps in the distances of asteroids from the sun, announced in 1866, were his most important discovery. They are still called the "Kirkwood Gaps" in research papers a century after his death.