Harold Zirin
 | This articlemay rely excessively on sourcestoo closely associated with the subject,potentially preventing the article from beingverifiableandneutral.(January 2012) |
Harold Zirin | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 7, 1929 |
| Died | January 3, 2012(aged 82) Pasadena, California,U.S. |
| Alma mater | Harvard University,Harvard University |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Scientific career | |
| Doctoral advisor | Philip M. Morse(MIT) |
Harold "Hal" Zirin(October 7, 1929 – January 3, 2012) was an American solarastronomeralso known as Captain Corona to a generation of Caltech Astronomy students.
Life
[edit]Most content from 1998 interview with Zirin[1]
Born in 1929 to immigrants from Russia andAustro-Hungaryin Boston, Zirin grew up in Bridgeport, Connecticut. While attendingBassick High School,Zirin's home-built telescope won him a Westinghouse Prize, aPepsi-Cola Scholarship, and scholarships toHarvard Universityas class of 1946 Valedictorian.[citation needed]Zirin earned his Bachelor of Science from Harvard in Applied Physics (1950) and completed his Astronomy Ph.D. in 1953. During his college years, Zirin played for the Harvard football team, participated in the hammer throw, and spent his summers working on the family's chicken farm in Vineland, New Jersey.
After a brief stint at Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, where he could not obtain clearance due to his father's association and membership in the Communist Party, Zirin returned to Harvard as a teaching fellow.
Harold Zirin moved to Colorado to work at theHigh Altitude Observatory,which specialized in solar research, in 1954, where he met his wife,Mary Noble Fleming,and married in 1957. Harold and Mary adopted a son in 1963 and a daughter in 1964 shortly before moving to Altadena, California, to start his professorship withCaltech.
Zirin's zeal and infectious enthusiasm in the study of the sun led his Caltech astronomy students in the 1970s (led byDavid Brinand Dick Trtek) to produce comic books and graffiti on construction fences of Zirin as a mild-mannered professor who transformed into the super-hero Captain Corona whenever he stepped into a solar observatory. Captain Corona (Zirin in a super-hero body-suit with cape and beret), seated with a small telescope in the flatbed of the observatory truck, took part one year in theOld MinersDay Parade at Big Bear.
Zirin was also fluent in several languages including German and Russian.
After retiring from Caltech in 1998, Harold and Mary Zirin provided funding toNational Jewish Healthin 2005 for an Endowed Chair in Pulmonary Biology. Harold died on January 3, 2012, after a prolonged battle withCOPD.
Work
[edit]Most content from 1998 interview with Zirin[1]
In 1953, Zirin briefly worked for theRAND Corporationin southern California before returning to Harvard for a teaching fellowship.[1]
In 1954, Zirin moved to Boulder, Colorado, to work at theHigh Altitude Observatorylocated inClimax, Colorado,which specialized in observing the sun.
In 1960–1961, in perhaps the first exchange with the U.S. that the Soviet Union permitted outside major Soviet cities, Harold and his wife, Mary, traveled by car to theCrimean Astrophysical Observatory.Zirin's six months there gave him hands-on experience with a solar telescope that convinced him of the necessity of continuous, fine-scale observations to solve the great riddle of the sun: how a 6,000 degree Fahrenheit apparent surface temperature (the “photosphere” or apparent surface of roiling gases) could rise to over a million degrees in the corona (the apparent atmosphere above the surface).
In 1964, Zirin accepted his dream job of Astrophysics Professor at theCalifornia Institute of Technology.After a sustained search of varied sites all over Southern California, undertaken at the instigation and support of physicistRobert Leighton,he chose to build an observatory near the north shore of Big Bear Lake, where placing the telescope surrounded by water would minimize the heat distortions arising from the ground (a common drawback in other solar observatories). Entrepreneurial in spirit, with a small grant from Caltech and money from the Fleischmann Foundation, Zirin built supporting facilities on shore, a dome on an island in the lake (though a year or so later, a causeway was built, connecting the island to the shore, as it remains), and built the telescopes for observing. Despite Zirin's driving nature, theBig Bear Solar Observatoryhad a congenial atmosphere, and there were always summer positions for students. Their usefulness led Zirin to propose to Caltech what became the extremely successfulSummer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)program. Zirin also had a series of multi-year post-doctoral fellows.
In 1967, Zirin wrote the college textThe Solar Atmosphere.[2]In 1988, Zirin wrote the college textAstrophysics of the Sun.[3][4]In addition, Zirin published about 250 research papers during his tenure at Caltech. Zirin also played a major role in solar research at the Caltech-operatedOwens Valley Radio Observatoryin the 1970s and helped develop a solarinterferometer.He was also active in planning for NASA's High Resolution Solar Observatory, which was never built.
On March 24, 1992,NOVAbroadcast titledEclipse of the Centuryaired featuring Harold Zirin and the 1991 solar eclipse from the observatory on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Zirin was frequently interviewed by local and national media relating to solar activity or eclipses.
In 1997, control of BBSO was moved from Caltech to theNew Jersey Institute of Technologyjust prior to Harold Zirin's retirement from Caltech in 1998.
References
[edit]- ^abc"Caltech Oral Histories, Transcript of interview by S. Cohen with Harold Zirin"(PDF).
- ^Zirin, Harold."The Solar Atmosphere (hard cover)".Engineering and Science.Blaisdell Publishing Co.: 502.ISSN0013-7812.
- ^Zirin, Harold(1988-06-23).Astrophysics of the Sun (hard cover).Cambridge University Press.p.433.ISBN978-0-521-30268-5.
- ^Zirin, Harold(1988-06-23).Astrophysics of the Sun (paperback).Cambridge University Press. p.433.ISBN978-0-521-31607-1.
External links
[edit]- Harold Zirin doctoral thesisThe Radiative Opacity of Stellar Matter(1952)
- Caltech Interview Archives
- Big Bear Solar Observatory
- Owens Valley Radio Observatory
- Harvard University
- Harold Zirin, 82 (Caltech obituary)
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