A New Start

Harlan Smith was a 38-year-old astronomer at Yale when he got a tantalizing offer: The University of Texas asked him to become the first Texas-hired director of McDonald Observatory. The University had owned the Observatory since its beginning in the 1930s, but had contracted with the University of Chicago to run it. When the deal expired, in 1962, the place was run down, and its big 82-inch telescope needed a lot of work. What’s more, Texas had no astronomy program to speak of on its Austin campus.

Smith saw the potential, though, so he agreed to take the job — but only if the University met a few conditions. Smith recalled those points decades later:

SMITH: I told the University that we should be allowed to build up to at least 12 full-time faculty members, that we should be given substantial University funds to refurbish the 82-inch, that we should have support in building a substantially larger telescope, we should be allowed to begin radio astronomy, and that we should be suppor