Kirkwood Observatory

Astronomy has been part of the IU curriculum for more than 150 years, and the Kirkwood Observatory, which celebrated its centennial in 2000, as well as Kirkwood Hall, were built on the Bloomington campus during the presidency of Joseph Swain (1893-1902). Swain once served as an assistant to Daniel Kirkwood, a 19th-century astronomer at IU who discovered what is still known today as "Kirkwood Gaps." The IUB Department of Astronomy’s first doctoral conferral was made in 1909 to Vesto Slipher, the discoverer of an astronomical phenomenon concerning the velocity of recession in nebulae, a discovery that led to modern theories of the expanding universe. Departmental growth continued rapidly during the tenure of Frank Edmondson, who served as chairman from 1944 to 1978. Edmondson and his late wife Margaret, the daughter of renowned astronomer Henry Norris Russell, saw to the establishment of a Kirkwood Chair in astronomy at IU, now held by Catherine Pilachowski, the president-elect of the American Astronomical Society, who studies galactic chemical enrichment, back when the first stars were forming in the Milky Way 14 billion years ago. Last month, astronomers at the Hubble Space Telescope announced they were able to measure the chemicals in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star 150 light years from Earth using a technique that could help find Earth-like bodies around other suns.