North of the Yard and West of the Cliffe, operating in both hemispheres and recognized internationally, the Harvard Observatory is locally one of the least known fixtures of the University.

Five pioneering directors have been responsible for the Observatory's 113 years of success. But it has been the present Director, Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Astronomy, who has outshadowed them all by his work in the last 31 years.

Shapley sometimes reterred to as the modern Copernicus, has not only continued the work of his predecessors in concentrating on vast classification projects, but he constantly furthered individual research throughout his term here.

Shapley's tinest contribution to science was the proof that the Milky Way galaxy is enormously Larger than had previously been thought probable. From this he derived the facts that the solar system is actually at the fringe of the stellar system.

It has not been only individually that Shapley has excelled. When he retires next year he can look back on several major improvements which he has overseen and which have given the Department its important international position.

With his staff Shapley has developed the foremost Graduate School of Astronomy in the country which can boast one-third of the nation's Ph.D.'s over the last twenty years. He has seen the number of Harvard-operated observatories increased from two to eight. His staff has invaded the continent of Africa. He has increased the number of working personnel four times over what it was when he came to Harvard in 1921. He has extended the Department's areas of research into the most numerous and varied phases of current inquiries.

Above all else, he has enticed men from all over the world to the Observatory to gain the wealth of catalogued observation as well as the understanding of new methods and equipment, to contribute and to learn, to solve the questions of the skies that are not local to one continent or one people, but universal.

The Harvard Observatory was originally founded as a Research Institute in Astronomy. This continued until 1925, when Shapley established a number of courses in astronomy on the graduate level. Now the observatory has twenty students who are studying for their doctorates.

Shapley attributes much of the Graduate School's expansion to his able assistants. These include Bart J. Bok, Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy and Associate Director of the Observatory; Cecilia P. Gaposchkin, researcher in Astronomy, Donald H. Menzel, professor of Astrophysics and Associate Director for Solar Research; and Fred L. Whipple, professor of Astronomy.

There is one catch to the Department's excellent instruction. Its own graduates currently working at Berkeley, California, and the California Institute of Technology, as well as Michigan, Princeton, and Indiana are currently threatening Harvard's top position.

The upswing of the younger schools does not worry University astronomers. These schools will soon be able to take up much of the teaching duties that have in the past, been confined to Harvard. This will leave the leading men more time in which to do their research. They are hoping in the future to have only 12 to 15 graduate students each year--a more efficient operating number.

Present Status of Observatory

The Observatory will continue to be America's nerve center for sorting international astronomy developments and passing on recent events to the world at large. Harvard Announcement Cards give detailed facts concerning news developments to subscribing obsevatories and individuals. Telegraph and cable relay to both North and South America with the most significant immediate results. Copenhagen, Denmark, is the clearing house of the Eastern Hemisphere.

Publications also issue with great regularity from the Observatory. Volumes of the Annals of the Observatory along with hundreds of treatises in the circulars, bulletins, and reprints form Harvard's academic contributions. In addition there are the Harvard Observatory Monographs, and the Harvard Books on Astronomy. Sky and Telescope, a magazine, circulated internationally, is also published here.

All Over the World