George Ellery Hale

George Ellery Hale (June 29 1868 – February 21 1938) was an American astronomer.

As an undergraduate at MIT, he invented the spectroheliograph.

He helped found a number of observatories, including Yerkes Observatory and Mount Wilson Observatory. He hired and encouraged Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble and did a great deal of fundraising, planning, organizing and promotion of astronomical institutions, societies and journals. The Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory is named after him.

He won the Henry Draper Medal in 1904, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1904, the Bruce Medal in 1916, the Copley Medal in 1932.

The asteroid 1024 Hale is named after him, as are craters on the Moon and on Mars.

External links

• Biography
• Bruce Medal page
• Awarding of the Bruce Medal: PASP 28 (1916) 12
• Awarding of the RAS gold medal: MNRAS 64 (1904) 388

Obituaries

• ApJ 87 (1938) 369
• JRASC 32 (1938) 192
• MNRAS 99 (1939) 322
• Obs 61 (1938) 163 (not online)
• PASP 50 (1938) 156