May 28, 2023
By Noreen Grice, Steve Russo and Sam Storch:
Noreen Grice:
For decades, Owen Gingerich participated in the “planetarium advisory committee” for the Charles Hayden Planetarium at the Boston Museum of Science. Once or twice a year, the planetarium staff and the planetarium advisory committee met at the Museum. As I recall, the committee was made of members from the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, MIT, Boston University, Tufts and Bentley College. We would discuss ideas for new shows and plans for the future of the planetarium. I always looked forward to those meetings and it always amazed me that we could contact them anytime when we needed assistance.
Just learned of the passing of Owen Gingerich, on May 28th. He was 93 years old. So sad.
I remember speaking to him in Schenectady when he signed his book for me (God’s Universe), about the Pluto thing, and how he thought the whole vote was a sham.
He was the head of the Planet Definition Committee, and he went home because he was told that there was not going to be a vote (At that time the vote was to “add” planets to the Solar System for a total of 12), and he woke up the next morning and was told that the IAU voted to get rid of Pluto’s Planetary status.
According to him, regardless of anything, Pluto was still the ninth planet.
We have lost an astronomical giant, both as a human being and as a scholar.
I first heard of Dr. Gingerich’s passing a few days ago via the Solar Eclipse Mailing List, but all of us in the planetarium world owe a special kind of gratitude for the “gift” of sharing a world with Owen Gingerich. His clear explanations and commitment to scholarly excellence have been examples for us to strive toward.
Many years ago, his book “The Great Copernicus Chase” was my introduction to a mighty commitment to accomplish what seemed a nearly impossible task. The successes described in that book came not only through examination of every existing copy of De Revolutionibus and studying the notations and “corrections” that had been made in each one, but also in the very achievement of accomplishing such a search requiring travel all over the globe.
Most of all, though, I remember the article he had written in Sky & Telescope (March 1993) describing his visit with the Pope and the resulting access to the very notebooks in which Galileo had written his observations! This is how all of us came to know that Galileo actually did observe Neptune in 1613 (if my memory of the date serves me correctly- I was not actually with Galileo on that fateful night… ). Of course, we all taught that the planet wasn’t officially “discovered” until 1846, after a famously long and difficult search. In the front of that same issue of the magazine was a commentary called Focal Point, written by Chet Raymo and titled “Righting Galileo’s Wrong.”
I can’t count the number of times in classes, lectures, and of course, in my “planetarium days” where the contributions of Owen Gingerich described in that article alone formed the solid foundation for historical perspective, for contemplation and for education. While the discovery of Neptune was most assuredly the crowning triumph of 19th century physics and astronomy, the dedicated scholarship of Owen Gingerich settled once and for all some of the “great questions lurking in the background.”
To this day, I still make presentations to astronomy groups and they are nearly stunned to realize that while Galileo was the person who “opened the great doors of the heavens” to all of us, who showed that the planets are not “just stars that wander,” and who suffered mightily for his own perseverance, that even Galileo himself couldn’t imagine that there could exist undiscovered planets!
Thank you, Dr. Gingerich, for the gift of your dedication and devotion to the passion we all share.