American Astronomy: Community, Careers, and Power, 1859-1940.

By John Lankford (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1997. xxvi plus 447pp.).

In American Astronomy, the first book-length essay on this topic, Lankford undertakes the daunting task of producing a collective biography of the astronomical community in the United States, while also providing a unique sociological perspective on that community. The period under review (1859 to 1940) was one of remarkable change in astronomy. The scientific contributions of American astronomers grew from essentially zero at the beginning of the period to a level that placed them among the international leaders by the end of the period. Lankford lays his foundation for this transition in a marvelous chapter that summarizes the technical and cultural changes and conflicts that occurred in American astronomy over the period. Pulling together loose strands of the historiography in this field, Lankford describes how the phenomenal growth in the stature of the American astronomical community was achieved by factory observatories staffed to produce massive amounts of data in short periods of time. Factory observatories contributed to both the routine grist of what Lankford characterizes as the old astronomy (positional astronomy and celestial mechanics) and to the development of the entrepreneurial new discipline of astrophysics.

The community over which Lankford casts his net includes 1,205 individuals. The prosopographic task of describing this community is undertaken with vigor, as the community is first parsed into three cohorts, those individuals at work in the community in 1859, a second cohort who entered the community between 1860 and 1900, and a third who entered the community between 1901 and 1940. From over fifteen years of research in far-flung archival resources as well as the primary journals of astronomy, Lankford assembled an unprecedented database of information about the members of this American astronomical community.

Lankford uses multivariate regression analysis of his database to show that family socioeconomic status and education are the most significant prior factors influencing each individual's entry position or first working assignment in the community. Mixing narrative discussion with statistical analysis, he traces changes in the education of astronomers over the period, demonstrating the gradual increase in emphasis on a college degree as a credential and, very late in the period, on the Ph.D. degree as a requirement. Lankford illustrates how the new discipline of astrophysics emerged at certain institutions, while the faculty at other institutions continued to emphasize celestial mechanics and traditional modes of observational astronomy. The fates of academic departments rose and fell on that choice of emphasis early in the twentieth century.

Dual chapter essays on career management and the reward system in the community again offer both narrative discussion and statistical analysis to buttress Lankford's arguments. In the two related chapters on career management, Lankford draws useful distinctions among sponsors, mentors and patrons at work in the community, the powers each may command, and the influence they have on individual careers. In several extended case studies he illustrates how individual astronomers were able, by their own judgements and careful development of mentoring and sponsoring relationships, to achieve successful careers. That such career management was essential is also demonstrated through a few exemplary failed careers.

As Lankford describes it, proximity to distinguished colleagues, cutting edge research programs and the latest in technology all contributed to the high institutional potential (IP) of a few selected venues (observatories or academic departments). In turn, institutional potential played a key role in determining how careers progressed and rewards were dispensed within the community. In one of his more surprising analytical results, Lankford concludes that career paths "through the reward system" in astronomy were bifurcated. Early rewards were determinative of the path followed, with one path preferentially leading to the highest award achievable, election to the French Academy of Sciences. This pattern apparently applies across all three cohorts, demonstrating a surprising and unexplained level of stability in an otherwise tumultuous period.

In a separate chapter on women in the astronomical community, Lankford describes how education and employment opportunities in astronomy differed on the distaff side. Emphasizing the role of Maria Mitchell as the path breaker for women, Lankford provides the ironic insight that although Mitchell broke the ice by earning professional employment as an astronomer, it was also she who paved the way for the misuse of many professionally qualified women in less than professional work. Women were undervalued and overworked by the male leaders of the community.

An intriguing final chapter draws comparisons between astronomy and other sciences in America, and between the astronomical communities in America and several European countries. In addition to the small size of astronomy in comparison to other American scientific communities, an active amateur segment appears to be one of the characteristics that distinguishes astronomy from either chemistry or biology. Lankford notes that the evolution of astrophysics took place in amateur as well as private professional observatories while no comparably significant development an be attributed to amateurs in biology or chemistry. In comparison to astronomy in the UK, Germany and France, American astronomy was advantaged in two substantial ways. By not participating in a major international project, the Carte du Ciel photographic atlas and catalogue, American observatories were able to devote their assets to the development of astrophysics at a critical time in the evolution of that new discipline. American astronomy was also sheltered from the devastation of two world wars that compromised all astronomical programs in Europe. Here, as in his earlier text, Lankford suggests fruitful areas for further research.

John Lankford has thus produced a major and sorely needed contribution to the history of science, but there are important problematical aspects of his work. The problems begin with Lankford's characterization of the community. There is no simple way of accounting for the 1,205 community members in the most basic terms of cohort, status and gender, though with some effort one might reconstruct such a summary from the sub-totals in 54 tables of data provided. That omission might be forgiven if a simple enumeration of the members of the community had been included. Without such a table, it is impossible to know, for example, which amateur astronomers Lankford has included in his community. Since it is clear that at least some amateurs were included, the questions that arise are important. How, for example, has Lankford defined the "career" of an amateur astronomer? Lankford has also included in his community a large number of computer technicians, individuals who were engaged in the grunt work of astronomy, but who had no aspiration to careers as scientists. The result is the inclusion of many individuals who had "careers" of less than five, and in fact less than one year. How did their inclusion influence Lankford's sophisticated analysis of career patterns and rewards for astronomers? The inclusion of these individuals, without further distinction of their status, may have obscured an important preferential allocation of professional manpower to the development of astrophysics and non-professional womanpower to the old astronomy, but Lankford chose to ignore this important level of classification in his analysis.

In a similar vein, Lankford appears to have truncated the careers of the astronomers in his third cohort in the year 1940. Thus, although the early career histories for each individual in this cohort were included in the regression analysis, any rewards which occurred after 1940 were apparently excluded. One must wonder how the truncated careers for this group, the largest of the three cohorts, influenced Lankford's analysis of the reward system.

One of Lankford's valuable contributions in American Astronomy is his use of institutional potential or IP as a variable, but his definitions/explanations of IP are weak. The need for better understanding of this important parameter is seen in Lankford's ranking of the private observatories of amateur astronomers Henry Draper and Lewis Morris Rutherfurd at the highest level of IP without any further explanation. Here again, a simple tabular presentation of the data involved would have gone a long way toward dealing with this residual uncertainty.

Lankford has drawn a compelling picture of the evolution of the American astronomical community in both narrative and statistical terms. His book is loaded with ideas for dissertations, with both explicitly identified new topics and many implicit opportunities to both challenge and elaborate on his basic argument. However one might view the deficiencies noted above, there can be no doubt that Lankford's American Astronomy will remain a rich resource for historians of American astronomy for several decades. Those of us who are plowing smaller parcels in this landscape are in his debt for the insights as well as the narrative details he has provided about the context within which we write.

Thomas R. Williams Rice University