This year, an astronomy course was offered at Tulane University for the first time since 2020.
“Every year students contact the chair, like, ‘I see this on the books,’ and we’re always like, ‘No, we’re not offering it.’ So I was like, ‘I’ll give it a shot,’” Jessica Graber, senior professor of practice in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, said.
The course, ASTR 1000, or Descriptive Astronomy, introduced students — mostly non-physics majors — to the basics of the solar system’s organization, as well as how to identify its components. As part of the class, students used Tulane Observatory on top of Joseph Merrick Jones Hall for stargazing sessions, guided by Graber.
Astronomy seems to have something of an impact on the students who take it. “We got to delve into concepts as a whole as opposed to specific equations,” senior and French and English double major Amelia Hervey said. “I’ve always been interested in space, [but] I’ve never had the opportunity to sit down and focus on it and learn a lot about it.”
Despite being a core area of study in classical education, astronomy at Tulane has gone mostly unobserved by Tulane students in recent years. According to Robert Purrington, professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Engineering Physics, the program has been incarnated by one professor at a time for most of Tulane’s history. “I think there have been four people that have taught astronomy since the turn of the [20th] century, at least since 1910,” Purrington said.
Purrington also happens to be a historian of science, having written books on the development of thermodynamic, electromagnetic and quantum mechanical theory, among others. His chronicling capabilities extend to Tulane — he is likely among the greatest living authorities on the history of the school’s science and engineering programs.
As it happens, Tulane professors of astronomy have left several significant marks on the university. Albert Bledsoe Dinwiddie, university president from 1918 to 1935, was originally a professor of astronomy and was cited several times in the New Orleans Times-Picayune as an expert during the return of Halley’s comet in 1910. Brown Ayers, another professor of physics and astronomy, served as dean of the Academic Colleges from 1900 to 1904 and oversaw the construction of F. Edward Hébert Hall, which served as the seat of the physics department for 75 years.
Purrington retired several years ago, after teaching all of Tulane’s astronomy and astrophysics courses for 37 years. These days, he can still be found in a book-heaped office in Stanley Thomas Hall, continuing to write.
In his words: “I’m trying to keep busy.”
The end of his time teaching saw the destruction of the old Cunningham Observatory, an art deco-style building that housed faculty offices and the university’s telescope since 1940, when it was erected following a large donation from a still anonymous donor.
The observatory was razed in 2001 to make room for an expansion of the Goldring Woldenberg Business Complex.
“It went back and forth with the City Council,” Purrington said, concerning the observatory’s demolition. “At one point, I got [a] telephone call: ‘Get out of the observatory in 15 minutes.’ They had gotten permission from the city council, and they didn’t want to delay it … So we had celestial spheres and all kinds of things that went out on the grass.”
The same year, the current observatory on top of Jones Hall was mounted with a new telescope inside. Purrington believes the old telescope — an instrument of the influential Harvard-affiliated astronomer William Henry Pickering, granted to Tulane by his granddaughter and United Fruit Company heiress Margaret Pickering Zemurray — now sits in a storage facility on the West Bank.
The Jones observatory still gets some use, with Purrington and now Graber overseeing mostly private sessions for cosmologically-inclined students. Between 2014 and 2016, it was out of commission for repairs, but its reopening was met with a gathering of nearly a 100 interested students. It was also the filming location for a gruesome murder scene in the 2018 crime drama “Out of Blue,” starring Patricia Clarkson, Toby Jones and James Caan.
The Tulane Astronomy Club, whose existence has waxed and waned over the years, has recently shown signs of reappearing. Sophomore Ryleigh Shullaw, the club’s newly appointed bookkeeping chair, said that she and several other students “are working hard to get it prepared and all set up for next year.” She was inspired to take a leading role in reviving the club upon taking General Physics II with Graber.
“We are hoping to frequent the observatory, hold movie nights, take trips to planetariums, and collaborate with other clubs to show more people how important and fun astronomy is,” Shullaw said.
Graber, not an astronomer or astrophysicist herself by training, emphasized the accessibility of the discipline to newcomers:
“It’s one of the few areas of science that true amateurs can still make a real contribution … there are apps where you can scroll through and help them classify galaxy shapes, crowdsourcing things. You can actually be part of it.”
“We’ve seen all the colored pictures. You’ve seen ‘Interstellar,’ you’ve seen the movies, you’ve seen everything,” Graber continued. “But actually looking through [a telescope] with your own eyes, seeing that rock out in space … there were audible gasps almost every time.”
