Skip to main content

3. Cosmic Discovery: The Search, Scope and Heritage of Astronomy, Martin Harwit, Basic Books (1981), MIT Press (1984). (Translated into French and published by Masson in France, and into German and published by Pieper Verlag in Germany), (1981), (1984).

 unspecified — Box: 21

COLLECTION DESCRIPTION

From the Collection:

Office files, reports, research files, and other materials relating to Harwit's work as a professor of astrophysics at Cornell University and his involvement with numerous organizations in his field. Correspondence files (1964-1987) include Cornell Department of Astronomy correspondence, articles, reports, research proposals, and other materials concerning astronomy, rocketry, astrophysics, telescopes, Hadamard transform spectrometry, infrared spectrometry, research projects, undergraduate and graduate education, and organizations with which Harwit was affiliated, including the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, the American Physical Society, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, and others. Also, reports, correspondence, proposals, and guidelines pertaining to committees, courses, finances, and activities of the Program in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and other offices with which it was associated, such as the National Science Foundation, the Society for the Humanities, and the Cornell Graduate School and Development Office; correspondence, handouts, and brochures of the Common Learning Program at Cornell; agendas, minutes, and correspondence relating to meetings of the Astrophysics Management Operations Working Group; and correspondence, minutes, reports, a budget, and printed materials concerning the Space and Earth Science Advisory Committee and an agreement between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. regarding outer space exploration. There is also a large quantity of grant proposals, regulations, reports, student notebooks from M.I.T., diaries, papers by Harwit's students, and printed materials dealing with Harwit's research proposals, including files on the National Science Foundation, NASA, Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, Kuiper Airborne Observatory Users' Group, the Shuttle Infrared Telescope Facility, and the Kitt Peak National Observatory. In addition, there are photographs, technical drawings, and oversized blueprints of rockets, telescopes, and other scientific instruments. Includes files on the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Program, 1984-1986.

Also, folders dealing with individual research projects and other topics; files relating to early nuclear cosmology, to talks given at Cornell and elsewhere (with 35 mm slides and overhead transparencies), including talks on subjects including infrared astronomical observations (Jim Houck's 60th birthday), rocket flights, airborne observations and astronomy, Hadamard Transform Optics, "The Universe as Seen by ISO," Paris (1998), Japan (1999), Hayden Planetarium (1999), the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO), Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF 1998), laboratory astrophysics, "Time in an Inhomogeneous Universe (early 1990s), lunar observations, cosmic discovery, understanding, the military and astronomy; correspondence; and files relating to a multi-disciplinary course, The Course of Science," taught at Cornell in 1985, which led to his book, "In Search of the True University - The Tools, Shaping and Cost of Cosmological Thought," 2014.

Dates

  • (1981)
  • (1984).

Creator

Language of Materials

Collection material in English

Extent

25 cubic feet. (25 cubic feet.)

Repository Details

Part of the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections Repository

Contact:
2B Carl A. Kroch Library
Cornell University
Ithaca NY 14853
607-255-3530
607-255-9524 (Fax)