George Lovi: scholar of the skies.
ON FEBRUARY 18th the astronomical community lost a good friend with the passing of George Lovi. Born on August 14, 1939, in Debrecen, Hungary, George came to the United States as a child and showed an interest in astronomy as early as age five. A student of Columbia University and resident of Lakewood, New Jersey, George was world renowned in the fields of celestial cartography, the history of astronomy, and science education.While known best for his encyclopedic knowledge of the sky and its lore, George possessed many talents: he designed and installed planetariums for Goto Optical, Viewlex, and Minolta; he was a consultant to Edmund Scientific Co., Time-Life Books, and Carl Zeiss company; and he was learned in classical music, history, and the Talmud.
Above all, planetariums were George's passion. He constructed his first one more than 35 years ago while in his teens (S&T: January 1958, page 122), and he made them his second home. Many will remember him as the staff astronomer at the Vanderbilt Planetarium on Long Island from 1974 to 1978. Later, he lectured at the Jones Planetarium Theater in Albertson, New York, and most recently at New York City's Hayden Planetarium.
Over the years, each encounter with George brought new surprises. For example, he was known to amble into a planetarium theater, inspect the sky for a few moments, and pronounce that a particular 5th-magnitude star was missing or, worse still, positioned incorrectly! James Sharp (National Air and Space Museum) recalls that "without pretense or tact," he would often point out such discrepancies to planetarians. "A few may have taken offense," he supposes, "but manufacturers ... and, most important, our audiences benefited from his uncompromising sense of perfectionism." Such acuity is even more surprising when you consider he was legally blind! He often joked about his thick eyeglasses, which he'd say could make him function as a "human microscope."
In 1971 George replaced Roy K. Marshall as columnist for Sky and Telescope's Rambling Through the Skies. This gave him a forum for bringing the poetry of the planetarium to words, while educating a new and larger audience about the science and lore of the night sky. Four years earlier he had created a new series of monthly star charts for Sky & Telescope, which ultimately became the focus of his column; he loved to boast that he was in the centerfold of every issue.
George's writings were arguably the most widely read among Sky & Telescope's readers. Stephen O'Meara, who was George's editor at the time of his death, remembers him as an inexhaustible scholar. "It's tremendously difficult to keep a magazine column fresh for 22 years," he says. "But George could conjure up fabulous ideas from scraps of knowledge in what he and I jokingly called his 'mental attic.'"
Indeed, George was never without his traveling library -- a bulging attache case crammed with rare books, unusual articles, or other arcana, which only he could have unearthed. He was also a "walking index" for Sky & Telescope, able to quote spontaneously the issue in which many articles appeared.
Introverted in the company of strangers, George was, nevertheless, very opinionated. He never failed to speak his mind, especially in his monthly columns. There he would often rail against light pollution or the misuse of a planetarium projector; he abhorred laser shows, privately calling the phenomenon "planetarium prostitution."
George wrote two books: Uranometria 2000.0, coauthored with Wil Tirion and Barry Rappaport, and Men, Monsters and the Modern Universe, which contains star maps by Tirion. Perry Remaklus, George's publisher at Willmann-Bell, Inc., recalls that before meeting him he thought George was an old sage: "Certainly someone this knowledgeable, I reasoned, had to be old. Imagine my surprise when at last I met him and found out we were of the same generation." Brenda Corbin, librarian at the U. S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., concurs: "From the philosophical musings, I assumed he was a much older man reflecting on a lifetime of wisdom."
When George was diagnosed with cancer last year, he kept the news a secret from all but his family and closest friends. The illness did not diminish his desire to work: on more than one occasion, he checked out of a chemotherapy session to meet his classes at the Hayden Planetarium -- he prized this joy right to his last day.
George was a very special person, one who explored the highways and byways of the stars; one who, on his passing, came that much closer to the heavenly spheres he toiled so hard to comprehend. We'll miss you George.
Sam Storch directs the Edwin P. Hubble Planetarium in Brooklyn, New York. Joe Rao is the senior meteorologist at Compu-Weather, Inc., outside New York City. Both authors were close friends of George Lovi.
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| Author: | Storch, Sam; Rao, Joe |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Sky & Telescope |
| Article Type: | Obituary |
| Date: | Aug 1, 1993 |
| Words: | 797 |
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