Lyman Spitzer

Lyman Spitzer Jr. (June 26, 1914 – March 31, 1997) was an American theoretical physicist, astronomer and mountaineer.

He then attended Phillips Academy from 1929 to 1931 and went on to Yale College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1935 and was a member of Skull and Bones.

During a year of study at St John's College, Cambridge, he was influenced by Arthur Eddington and the young Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar.

In the 1930s and 1940s, he was among the first to recognize star formation as an ongoing contemporary process.

Returning to the U.S., Spitzer received his Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University in 1938 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "The spectra of late supergiant stars", under the direction of Henry Norris Russell.

As a scientist, he carried out research into star formation and plasma physics and in 1946 conceived the idea of telescopes operating in outer space.

Spitzer invented the stellarator plasma device and is the namesake of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

As a mountaineer, he made the first ascent of Mount Thor, with Donald C. Morton.

Spitzer was born to a Presbyterian family in Toledo, Ohio, the son of Lyman Spitzer Sr. and Blanche Carey (née Brumback).

Through his paternal grandmother, he was related to inventor Eli Whitney.

Spitzer graduated from Scott High School.

In 1947, at the age of 33, he succeeded Russell as director of Princeton University Observatory, an institution that, virtually jointly with his contemporary and friend Martin Schwarzschild, he continued to head until 1979.

Spitzer's research centered on the interstellar medium, to which he brought a deep understanding of plasma physics.

Spitzer was the founding director of Project Matterhorn, Princeton University's pioneering program in controlled thermonuclear research, renamed in 1961 as Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

He was an early proponent of space optical astronomy in general, and in particular of the project that became Hubble Space Telescope.

In 1965, Spitzer and Donald Morton became the first to climb Mount Thor 1675 m, located in Auyuittuq National Park, on Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada.

As a member of the American Alpine Club, Spitzer established the "Lyman Spitzer Cutting Edge Climbing Award" (Now called the "Cutting Edge Grant") which gives $12,000 to several mountain climbing expeditions annually.

Spitzer's brief time as a faculty member at Yale was interrupted by his wartime work on the development of sonar.

His monographs, "Diffuse Matter in Space" (1968) and "Physical Processes in the Interstellar Medium" (1978) consolidated decades of work, and themselves became the standard texts for some decades more.

In 1981, Spitzer became a founding member of the World Cultural Council.

Spitzer died suddenly on March 31, 1997, after completing a regular day of work at Princeton University.

He was buried at Princeton Cemetery and was survived by wife Doreen Canaday Spitzer, four children, and ten grandchildren.

Among Spitzer's four children is neurobiologist Nicholas C. Spitzer, who is currently the professor and vice chair in neurobiology at UC San Diego.

Awards

Named after him