AN ASTRONOMER'S LIFE

By Edwin Brant Frost '86. XI. 300 pages. Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

To those of the Dartmouth generation now compelled to regard itself as an older one the life and work of Professor Frost are so familiar as to require no description. To men of more recent times it may be said that the author was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, and came to Hanover in 1871. His father, Dr. Carleton P. Frost, from that time until his death in 1896 was the village physician, as well as dean of the Dartmouth Medical School. Professor Frost was graduated from Dartmouth in 1886. After three years as instructor in the Chandler School and later in the academic department, he spent two years in study abroad, first at the University of Strassburg, and afterwards as assistant in the Royal Astrophysical Laboratory at Potsdam. Upon his return in 189 a he was for six years in charge of the work in astronomy at Dartmouth. In 1898 he became professor of astrophysics at the Yerkes Observatory, at Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and in 1905 he was made Director of that Observatory. This position he retained until his retirement in 1932.

This is the story which Professor Frost tells. It is not dramatic, nor does it contain an abundance of spectacular incidents, but it is an interesting story, none the less. The center of his interests, the science of astronomy and the development of the great observatory under his charge, is not neglected, but the stress is upon the man who is a scientist, and not upon the scientist who, so far as is possible to humanity, has divested himself of his attributes as a man. His period of study abroad, his experiences as a teacher, his share in the upbuilding of a great scientific institution, the research which he has directed, his impressions of the eminent scientific men whose associate he has been, are all set forth, but concerns remote from his main scientific interests, his boyhood in a New Hampshire village, his student days, his travels, his love of birds, his joy in flowers and trees, in gardening and landscaping, his reflections upon matters political and social, are equally stressed. As a result, the reader gains a vivid impression of the man as a whole; a test to which not all works of this character can successfully respond.

It is true that the book is not entirely free from the defect common in autobiographies; discussions and reflections which, from their platitudinous character or from their doubtful validity, are of more interest to the writer than to the reader. Nor is it completely devoid of minor errors of fact. But these defects are not of major importance. The story, simply but effectively told, illustrated by anecdote, and illuminated by flashes of wit, holds the reader's interest, and brings him to that frame of mind in which he feels a personal intimacy with the writer.

To Dartmouth readers the earlier chapters, containing an account of the author's boyhood and young manhood in Hanover, are of especial interest. Again one's belief is renewed that in no place are the lines of youth so pleasantly cast as in a college town in rural New England. Again do we recall tales of almost forgotten town characters of the nineties; the celibate domesticity of Sam Phelps and his respectable wife, the salty sayings of Jason Dudley, the devoted, but somewhat tedious, ministrations of good Dr. Leeds, and many others. And to one who, like the reviewer, was an undergraduate during a portion of the period, and who, in common with his fellows, looked upon the mysterious orgies of the "kid faculty" of the times with a ribald mirth that was mixed with some portion of envy, the revelation of the exact nature of these orgies, although somewhat delayed, is still of timely interest.

The reaction of the author to the blindness of his later years cannot be passed over in this review. The sturdy mental fibre which to him made what to most people would seem a crushing calamity appear merely as a problem to be met with all the resource of a trained mind, and which in no way was to nullify either the work or the pleasures of his life, is not a quality common even to scientists. Surely only a scientist, a nature lover, and one whose remaining senses had been sharpened by the loss of sight could evolve from the variation in the frequency of the chirping of a cricket with changing temperature a mathematical formula by which the prevailing temperature may be determined. And, finally, no one but a scientist, with keen powers of imagination and some preception of popular psychology, could conceive the idea of setting in motion the wheels of a great exposition by light which originated from a star at the period, forty years before, of the last preceding exposition in that city, and which reached the earth in the nick of time to do that service for its successor.

PIERCE & PLUMMERReal Estate : Insurance 412 Centre St., Newton, Mass. Desirable homes for sale and to rent in the Newtons and Wellesleys C. T. Pierce '07 Curtis Plummer '07