biography
| name: |
Ritchey, George Willis
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1864–1945)
|
| biography:
| Optical instrument maker and astronomer, born in Tupper's Plains, Ohio, USA. At first a woodwork teacher, he became an optical innovator and oversaw the construction of instruments at Chicago's Yerkes Observatory, where he adapted a 40-in telescope to photography for George Ellery Hale (1896). After working with Hale in constructing the Mt Wilson Observatory (1904–9), he headed its optical shop (1909–19), and in 1917 he photographed a nova that helped establish the existence of galaxies far from the Milky Way. In later years he worked with the major observatory in Paris, France, where he solved a common mirror-distortion problem by collaborating on the design of the Ritchey-Chretien telescope with the US Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. |
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