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Sidney Charles Bartholemew "Ben" Gascoigne AO (11 November 191525 March 2010) was a New Zealand-born Australian optical astronomer and expert in photometry who played a leading role in the design and commissioning of Australia's largest optical telescope, the Anglo-Australian Telescope, one of the world's most important astronomical facilities. Born in Napier, New Zealand, Gascoigne trained in Auckland and at the University of Bristol, before moving to Australia during World War II to work at the Commonwealth Solar Observatory at Mount Stromlo in Canberra. He became skillful in the design and manufacture of optical devices such as telescope elements. Following the war, Gascoigne and astronomer Gerald Kron used newly modernised telescopes at Mount Stromlo to determine that the distance between our galaxy and the Magellanic Cloud dwarf galaxies had been underestimated by a factor of two. Because this measurement was used to calibrate other distances in astronomy, the result effectively doubled the estimated size of the universe. They also found that star formation in the Magellanic Clouds had occurred more recently than in the Milky Way; this overturned the prevailing view that both had evolved in parallel. A major figure at Mount Stromlo Observatory, Gascoigne helped it develop from a solar observatory to a centre of stellar and galactic research, and was instrumental in the creation of its field observatory in northern New South Wales, Siding Spring Observatory. When the British and Australian governments agreed to jointly build the Anglo-Australian Telescope at Siding Spring, Gascoigne was involved from its initial conception and throughout its lengthy commissioning, taking its first photograph. Gascoigne was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for his contributions to astronomy and to the Anglo-Australian Telescope. Gascoigne and his wife, artist Rosalie Gascoigne, had three children. After he retired, Gascoigne wrote several works on Australian astronomical history. He acted as Rosalie's photographer and assistant, using his technical skills to make her artworks resilient for public display. ==Early life== Ben Gascoigne's parents met and married in Levin, New Zealand, just before the First World War. They soon moved to Napier, where Gascoigne was born in 1915. He attended Auckland Grammar School, and won a scholarship to Auckland University College (now the University of Auckland) a year before he was due to finish high school. Faced with a choice between studying history or the sciences, he chose the latter because he had a severe stammer and thought that it would be less of an impediment.〔 He completed both a Bachelor's degree and a Master's qualification in science, securing Honours in both mathematics and physics, finishing his studies in 1937.〔 Despite these achievements, he did not consider himself to be practically trained, saying: "I was still very much a theorist, with no practical physics at all. The professor in Auckland used to wince when I walked past the cupboard in which the good instruments were kept!"〔 In 1933, while studying at the University, he met his future wife Rosalie Norah King Walker, although they did not marry for another decade.〔 Rosalie completed a Bachelor of Arts while Gascoigne was studying in Auckland; she also studied at Auckland's teacher training college while he was in Bristol.〔 Although Gascoigne had always intended to study mathematics at Cambridge, an event occurred that significantly shaped his career. In 1931, an earthquake in New Zealand killed Michael Hiatt Baker, a young traveller from Bristol, and his parents established a postgraduate scholarship in his memory, for study at the University of Bristol,〔 which Gascoigne won and took up in 1938.〔 During his thesis studies at Bristol, Gascoigne developed a diffraction theory of the Foucault test that is used for evaluating the shape of large telescope mirrors.〔 He completed his doctorate in physics in 1941, but by then war had broken out in Europe, and he had already returned to New Zealand on the last available ship.〔〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ben Gascoigne」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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