The Leah and Samuel Levenson Papers

Samuel Levenson was a Worcester native who received his A.B. from Clark University in 1930 and his A.M. in 1936. He was a journalist and both he and his wife, Leah, were authors of biographies. Samuel died in 1977 and Leah in 2000 and Leah left their papers and library without restriction to Clark University in her will. Appropriate books were incorporated into the Goddard Library circulating collection. The books written by the Levensons were primarily biographies of Irish men and women. The papers include transcriptions and tapes of interviews made in the course of the Levensons’ researches, photographs of the biographees, authorizations and permissions forms, contracts, and journals written by Granville Hicks. Leah was working on a biography of Abbie Hoffman at the time of her death and the papers include notes, tapes and a rough draft. There are also many letters written by Samuel to Leah while he was in the army during World War II, some of which are transcribed

Granville Hicks and the Small Town

This article tells the story of Granville Hicks\u27 life, especially his life during the 1940s, revealed through journals that are now held in Syracuse University\u27s Special Collections. The author was famously a Marxist critic and member of the Communist party during the 1930s, before defecting in 1939 due to the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. He then somewhat retreated from intellectual life to become a member of a small community in Grafton, New York, closer to his rural upbringing. He struggled to try to better the small community in areas of civic institutions and racial prejudice, seeing Grafton as a microcosm of the world. Later in life, he became known as a staunch anti-Marxist, but is also remembered as a novelist and author

The Science Performance of JWST as Characterized in Commissioning

This paper characterizes the actual science performance of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), as determined from the six month commissioning period. We summarize the performance of the spacecraft, telescope, science instruments, and ground system, with an emphasis on differences from pre-launch expectations. Commissioning has made clear that JWST is fully capable of achieving the discoveries for which it was built. Moreover, almost across the board, the science performance of JWST is better than expected; in most cases, JWST will go deeper faster than expected. The telescope and instrument suite have demonstrated the sensitivity, stability, image quality, and spectral range that are necessary to transform our understanding of the cosmos through observations spanning from near-earth asteroids to the most distant galaxies.Comment: 5th version as accepted to PASP; 31 pages, 18 figures; https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1538-3873/acb29

The James Webb Space Telescope Mission

Twenty-six years ago a small committee report, building on earlier studies, expounded a compelling and poetic vision for the future of astronomy, calling for an infrared-optimized space telescope with an aperture of at least $4m$. With the support of their governments in the US, Europe, and Canada, 20,000 people realized that vision as the $6.5m$ James Webb Space Telescope. A generation of astronomers will celebrate their accomplishments for the life of the mission, potentially as long as 20 years, and beyond. This report and the scientific discoveries that follow are extended thank-you notes to the 20,000 team members. The telescope is working perfectly, with much better image quality than expected. In this and accompanying papers, we give a brief history, describe the observatory, outline its objectives and current observing program, and discuss the inventions and people who made it possible. We cite detailed reports on the design and the measured performance on orbit.Comment: Accepted by PASP for the special issue on The James Webb Space Telescope Overview, 29 pages, 4 figure

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, Irish Feminist

From Syracuse\u27s Irish Studies series comes this excellent biography of an exceptional, determined woman. Sheehy-Skeffington (1877-1946) disavowed her church -- no light matter in the Ireland of her time-- was considered a leftist, waged unceasing battles for women\u27s rights and for peaceful political solutions to her country\u27s problems, and was \u22assertive\u22 long before it was fashionable. Ideally matched with Francis Skeffington (who attached her name to his own when they were married), she was a major figure in the Irish scene during the first half of the 20th century. After the murder of Francis at the behest of a British officer, Hanna continued to serve the cause of freedom as editor, author and lecturer popular on the American circuit as well as at home. Levenson wrote With Wooden Sword, a biography of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington; Natterstad is a professor of English who writes on Irish subjects.http://digitalcommons.framingham.edu/books/1152/thumbnail.jp