Customer Reviews

Walter Baade: A Life in Astrophysics.

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Walter Baade is a greater astronomer who worked at the Mount Wilson Observatory during its heydays. He is most famous for discoverying that there are two different stellar populations. This is very important for our understanding of
galaxy formation and evolution. Throughout his life Baade had remained a citizen of Germany, though he spent most of his productive years in America. This biography was written by D. Osterbrock, who is himself an astrophysicist and had a few encounters with Baade when he was alive, and the author did a lot of research on the archives preserved in the Huntington library. The book provides a lot of insights on the development of astronomy from 1920s through 1950s. The great strength of the book is that the author himself understand astronomy very well, so his discussion of the technical problems faced by Baade and his contemporary astronomers is very clear and to the point.

A drawback of this book is that it is too narrowly focused. It gives the impression that God give a single purpose for Baade's life, which is to discover the two populations. The author try to connect everything Baade did from the beginning of his career to this most important discovery, presumably to show that this is not a discovery by chance but has been prepared by a whole life's experience. That may be the case, but it makes the book boring to read, as there is not any suspension leading to this discovery. Also, the author is apparently very sympathetic to Baade's character or attitude to work, and as a contrast he compares it at every opportunity with the other major astronomers at the time, especially Shapley, Zwicky and Hubble, all of whom he doesn't like. This in itself is not bad as it does give a more vivid impression on the relationship between these people, but in my opinion he repeated it too many times.