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…….
to all those of you who returned the questionnaire we sent out with the
last issue of Development Matters.
We had a generous response - on all sorts of issues.
Sorry if you weren't one of the three draw winners to receive the
sculpture trail booklet but thank you anyway for your help.
The new-look Ex gratia is the result.
We
have kept what you liked - balance of text and photos, type-size,
brevity and economy - disposed of things you disliked – especially
white writing on red - and given a lot of thought to suggestions you
made about the contents. You
asked for more information about the University's plans for itself.
In response, we began by asking about the Music Department.
You wanted to see departments featured as well as projects you
have helped to fund - the item on the Institute of Arab and Islamic
Studies is the first of these. More
news of staff, whether retiring or achieving something special, was a
popular request. Dr. Donald
Barber – alumnus, staff member and Honorary Graduate – is to be
remembered with a new astrophysics facility named after him.
We were asked to feature in the donors list, periodically, those
who give regularly by standing order.
As a result, once a year, we will have a
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special acknowledgement
for our regular donors. And
finally, an overwhelming majority of you asked for photos of our
beautiful campus, including pictures from the archives.
It will be a pleasure to track them down.
But please, don't wait to be asked, let us know what you think of
Ex gratia when you think it.
New
beginnings - Gandy Street, the day in 1955 when the University announced
itself to the world.
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Thus
Dr. Donald Barber described his work on photographic photometry and
research into the spectra of the stars.
Thanks to his legacy to the University, today’s undergraduates
will have opportunity to examine, stars 10,000 times dimmer than those
visible to the naked eye.
Dr.
Barber’s association with the University spanned eight decades.
He graduated in Physics in 1925, staying on to do research under
Professor Newman. In 1936,
he started work at the Norman Lockyer Observatory on Salcombe Hill,
Sidmouth. Apart from a
stint at the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton in California and
classified work during the war, Dr. Barber worked on at the Lockyer
Remnant of a star that
exploded a thousand years ago - the sort of image Exeter undergraduates
will be able to capture with the Donald Barber Telescope. By permission
of David Strange, Worth Hill Observatory.
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Observatory,
continuing his long-term spectrophotometric programme on the colour
temperatures of early-type stars and producing a steady stream of
published papers.
The
University awarded him an Honorary MSc in 1987 and, on his retirement,
he became Director Emeritus of the Observatory.
Dr.
Barber died last year, aged 99, and bequeathed a portion of his estate
to the University. There
was unanimous agreement to use the legacy for a new undergraduate
teaching telescope, named in his honour.
The telescope comes with a suite of instruments including a
spectrograph. Professor Tim Naylor of the University’s Astrophysics Group
said “Many of the most astonishing advances in astrophysics over
the last century, such as the discovery of the expansion of the
Universe, have depended upon the technique of spectroscopy, in which an
object’s light is split up according to its wavelength.
Computerised
operation from the automated dome, sited on the roof of the Physics
tower will give undergraduates on the new Physics with Astrophysics
degree course forward-looking and practical training in observational
astronomy. We also hope to
use the telescope in our public understanding of science programmes”.
Work has begun on the facility which should be operating at the
end of 2002. |
