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Professionals on the Peak

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Catherine Nisbett Becker
Catherine Nisbett Becker*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
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Argument

The administration of mountain expeditions from the ground created special managerial problems. The Harvard College Observatory's Boyden Expeditions of 1887–1890 sent men and materiel to three sites: Pike's Peak, Colorado; Mount Wilson, California; and Chosica, Peru. Their goal was to test sites in order to find a suitable site for a permanent Boyden station to conduct astrophysical work in service of Harvard's preexisting projects. The logistical difficulties of living on the mountainside combined with the organizational difficulties of administrating a station at a distance. The men who lived on the mountain were professionally vulnerable, and often cut off from their home observatory both by the weather conditions at their own altitude and local politics on the ground below them. Only when an unbroken line of communication could be established between the mountain station and the Harvard Observatory could the astronomers on both ends work together to create a successful expedition.

Type
Research Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 487 - 507
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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