Schaefer, William P.

Shirley, Lawrence

Zwicky, Fritz

Name not available

Letters 
Timbuktu Revisited 
Champaign, Illinois 
DR. and MRS. CLAUSER: 
Last spring as I was winding up my 
Peace Corps work in Sierra Leone, I read 
about your Sahara crossing and glorious 
entrance into Tombouctou* ("To 
Timbuktu-the Hard Way"-E&S, 
March-April) . I had already made plans 
to visit there, so I decided to find your 
friends. 
My trip was a bit easier than yours. 
On August 3,1 flew Air Mail up to 
Tombouctou. A Mali Tourism Office bus 
met the plane and carried me and a few 
other passengers into town. I was pleased 
to discover that I was sitting right next 
to the hotel director, who had come out 
to meet the plane. In my halting French, 
I launched into an interview with him. 
Yes, he remembered you (how could any- 
one forget?), and he was pleased to see 
the copy of E&S that I had brought along. 
Unfortunately, the hotel chauffeur who 
had met you was out of town. 
I spent the day exploring, and in the 
evening walked out onto the desert and 
sat for a while watching the stars. When 
I came back, I headed for my room, but 
a man intercepted me with a lot of 
French too fast for my comprehension. 
Then I figured it out; he was the gung-ho 
chauffeur who had led your welcoming 
party. The rumor of my arrival reached 
him as soon as he got back into Tombouc- 
tou, and he was eager to see the pictures 
and the mention of his help in the E&S 
article. 
The next morning I had to fly out, but 
I left my E&S there with your friends, 
who send you their greetings. 
My congratulations on your successful 
Sahara crossing! I talked to others who 
had done it, and it sounds like a mighty 
tough expedition. Good luck on all your 
future adventures. 
*For anyone who questions the 
difference in Larry's spelling of  the name 
of  the city and ours, we'd like to point 
out that our atlas gives both of them- 
plus "Timbuctoo." As far as we're 
concerned, it's dealer's choice. 
In Memory of Milton Humason 
Gumligen bei Bern 
Switzerland 
EDITOR: 
On June 18 of this year, Milton L. 
Humason ( 1891-1 972), formerly of the 
Mt. Wilson and Palomar Observatories, 
departed forever to the hunting grounds 
of the world's great astronomers. There 
we imagine him happily comparing notes 
about the baffling intricacies of our 
universe with Aristarchus, Galileo, the 
Herschels, Bessel, Fraunhofer, and 
George Ellery Hale, his former chief and 
promoter. Although disregarded by the 
mutual admiration societies and the 
windbags supposedly researching for the 
large national magazines, Humason has 
left his mark on astronomy for centuries 
to come, if the world survives that long. 
Those of us who were lucky enough 
to be among his friends will always 
remember him for three most outstanding 
achievements. 
First, as one of this century's great, if 
not its greatest, observer he enriched our 
knowledge enormously both through his 
discoveries and his penetrating observa- 
tions of cosmic bodies and phenomena. 
These include comets, various features 
Milton L. Humason 
Climb Our Mountain 
of the sun and the planets, the spectra of 
white dwarfs, remnants of novae and 
supernovae, the Humason-Zwicky stars, 
galaxies in general and their nuclei in 
particular, as well as clusters of galaxies 
to the remotest distances. 
Humason never let himself be bluffed 
by those perennial high priests in 
astronomy who think they know it all. 
Although these moguls and their in- 
numerable sycophants steadfastly claimed 
that the increasing redshifts observed by 
Humason in the spectra of ever fainter 
clusters of galaxies clearly meant that 
the universe is expanding, he never wrote 
about the velocities of recession of the 
respective galaxies but continued to call 
them apparent velocities of recession 
(and later, the symbolic velocities of 
recession). 
When some colleagues denounced my 
search for faint blue stars near the north 
galactic pole as one of the "worst" jobs 
done in modern astronomy, Humason 
spent several years quietly observing 
their spectra and proved that each one of 
these stars (now called Humason- 
Zwicky stars) was unique and of a type 
not previously known. Likewise, when 
some of the so-called "greatest" insisted 
that intergalactic matter does not exist, 
or at least that it would never be observ- 
able, Humason most effectively 
collaborated with me to prove the 
contrary. 
Upon his retirement from the Mt. 
Wilson Observatory, Humason joined 
me in my search for supernovae at the 
Palomar Mountain Observatory. During 
the five years of his work there, he 
discovered about 30 of these very rare 
objects, among them the first of a most 
important new type 111. 
Secondly, many who were originally 
outsiders to astronomy, and especially 
some of us lone wolves, could never 
have achieved what we did without 
Humason's continued support and help. 
He saw to it that the Babylonians had to 
allow us "undesirables" the use of the 
giant telescopes of our two observatories. 
He also spent much time instructing us, 
so that we would be able to make optimum 
use of the available instruments. 
Finally, and perhaps most important, 
Humason was the ideal of a scientist 
who knows that society has made it 
possible for him to pursue in peace the 
quests that interest him most, and that for 
this privilege he must in turn serve and 
repay society. He thus became one of 
the all-too small group of scientists who 
consider it their highest duty to bridge 
the ever widening gap between science 
and the general public. For this many 
men in all walks of life will remember 
him as their friend. 
He always had the goal of a sound 
society and a beautiful world in his mind 
rather than the realization of any of the 
degenerate ambitions which motivate the 
actions of so many misguided scientists. 
FRITZ WICKY 
Professor of Astronomy 
Emeritus 
Pasadena 
EDITOR : 
In January 1962, E&S published a 
letter from Richard Jali, '55, saying that 
a peak in the California Sierra had been 
named after Caltech. Jali, along with Jim 
Eder and Ted Matthes (also class of ' 5 5 ) ,  
had made an ascent of this peak on 
June 25,1961, and they then proposed to 
the Board of Geographic Names of the 
Department of the Interior that the 
mountain be named Caltech Peak. The 
proposal was accepted, and the name 
appeared on topographic maps within 
a year or two afterward. 
I passed through the area in 1965, 
thought it was nice that there was a 
Caltech Peak, and forgot about it until 
the summer of 1971 when I spent 10 days 
camped at an unnamed lake within sight 
of it. I took a picture of the mountain 
then, and hung an enlargement on the 
wall of my office when I got back to 
Pasadena. 
There it attracted the attention of Jim 
Greenfield (at that time director of 
corporate relations in the Institute's 
development office). He had climbed the 
peak in 1970 in a party with Dick Mooney 
from the business services office. 
Greenfield urged me to make the climb 
when I returned to the area the next 
summer, so on August 20,1972, my wife 
and I went to the top. 
We started out at 7:40 a.m. from our 
camp some six miles distant and west of 
the ridge on which the peak is located. 
We weren't sure we could make the climb 
from that side, but it looked easy to get 
to a saddle on the ridge about a thousand 
feet below the summit. We thought we 
could scramble around from there to the 
eastern side and then walk up the 
comparatively easy eastern slope. 
At 9 : 20 we were at Lake South 
America, directly west of the saddle, and 
we climbed the 900 feet to the saddle by 
10:45. There we discovered that the 
ridge falls off very sharply to the east, 
but a chute leads upward on the western 
slope. We followed that up for another 
100 feet, and it took us toan  easy route 
on the eastern side. By 12 noon we were 
at the top-13,832 feet high. 
A group of people who had climbed 
the peak on November 10,1963, had left 
a register at the summit-a notebook 
placed in a tobacco can tucked under a 
Letters . . . continued 
rock cairn. We read the register carefully, 
and I tried to note all the Caltech people 
who had been there before us. One of 
the entries, dated August 16, 1964, 
consisted of four or five pages of history 
and glowing description of Caltech 
written by Thor Hansen, '64. It made me 
realize that I should probably have 
brought along a catalog-or at least a 
copy of Facts About Caltech-to leave 
at the top. 
After that there was a five-year gap 
before Eric Jensen, '70, and Roger Jensen, 
ex '71, signed in on August 21,1969. 
They were followed a couple of weeks 
later by Volker Vogt, '64. Vogt's party, 
camped at Milestone Basin, included 
Roger Hendrix, '65, and Alan Limpo, 
'64, but it does not appear that they 
climbed the peak. 
Dale Dalrymple, '73, made the ascent 
on September 12, 197 1, spent the night 
30 feet below the summit, and headed 
along the ridge to Mt. Stanford the next 
day. My wife and I seem to be the only 
two Caltech people who climbed the peak 
in 1972. 
We spent an hour at the top, looking 
around, taking a few pictures, and eating 
lunch, and started back to camp at 1 : 10. 
My notes say, "Arrived camp 4:05-a 
great day." 
It was a great day; the views in all 
directions from Caltech Peak are 
sensational. To the south is the entire 
Kern River valley, and you can see the 
peaks in the area around Mt. Whitney on 
one side and the Kaweahs and the 
mountains to the north and south of 
them on the other side. To the east are 
Mt. Tyndall and Mt. Williamson (at 
14,375 feet the second highest in the 
Sierra) and Diamond Mesa just across 
the John Muir Trail. Directly west the 
entire basin of the upper Kern River is 
laid out before your eyes. It was so 
beautiful we had a hard time tearing our- 
selves away. 
As Dick J ali indicated in his 1962 
letter, the climb is long (26 miles) and 
arduous if you do the entire trip from 
Independence, over Shepherd Pass, and 
then up the mountain and back again. 
However, it is an easy day's hike from 
Caltech Peak 
any camp in the Upper Kern area or 
along the Muir Trail near Tyndall Creek. 
The Climber's Guide to the High Sierra 
indicates that an eastern approach is 
Class 2-that is, it may require holding 
on with the hands occasionally, but in 
general it is possible to walk to the top. 
The western approach is Class 2 with a 
short 50-75 feet of Class 3 climbing where 
footholds and handholds are necessary. 
Whatever the class officially assigned to it, 
the climb is not really difficult or 
dangerous. It does require some agility 
in scrambling over rocks and keeping 
one's footing in steep, loose sand and 
rock. 
The peak is not as high as Mt. Whitney, 
but the views are just as spectacular. 
One refreshing difference is in the 
number of people climbing the mountain 
on any summer day-two or three, 
possibly, rather than "Whitney's several 
hundred. Climbing Caltech Peak is a 
grand experience, and I hope other 
students and faculty will want to make 
the effort-and enjoy the scenery and the 
special sense of "ownership" that we felt. 
WILLIAM P. SCHAEPER 
Registrar 
Statement of ownership management and 
circulation (Act of ~ u g u s t  12 1970: Section 3685. 
Title 39. United States code).' 1. Title of publication: 
Engineering and Science. 2. Date of filing: 
September 27,1972.3. Frequency of issue; 7 times 
a year. 4. Location of known office of publication: 
1201 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, Calif. 91109. 
5. Location of the headquarters of general business 
offices of the ublishers: 1201 E. California Blvd., 
Pasadena, ~ a U f .  91109. 6. Names and addresses of 
publisher, editor, and managing editor: Publisher: 
California Institute of Technology Alumni 
Association. Editor: Edward Hutchmgs, Jr., 
Managing Editor: Jacquelyn Hershey, 1201 E. 
California Blvd., Pasadena, Calif. 91109. 7. Owner: 
California Institute of Technology Alumni 
Association, 1201 E California Blvd., Pasadena 
Calif. 91109. 8. ~ n o w n  bondholders, mortgagee's, 
and other security holders owning or holding 1 
percent or more of total amount of bonds mortgages 
or other securities: none. 10. The purpose, function, 
and nonprofit status of this organization and the 
exempt status for Federal income tax purposes have 
not changed during receding 12 months. 11. 
Extent and nature ofcirculation: A. Total no. 
copies printed: average during preceding 12 months, 
9207; actual number of latest issue, 9400. 
B. Paid circulation: 1. Sales through dealers and 
carriers, street vendors and counter sales: average 
during last 12 months, 20; actual number of latest 
issue. 20. 2. mail subscriotions: average during last 
12 months 5920- actualnumber of latest issue 
6159. C. Total paid circulation: average during 
preceding 12 months 5940- actual number of latest 
issue, 6179. D. Free distribution by mail, carrier or 
other means: 1. samples complimentary and other 
free copies: average during preceding 12 months 
3067' actual number of latest issue 2771. 2. copies 
distributed to news agents but not sold: none. 
E. Total distribution: average during preceding 12 
months 9007- actual number of latest issue 8950. 
F. office use left-over unaccounted, spoiled after 
printing: fiverage during preceding 12 months 200; 
actual number latest issue, 450. G. Total: average 
during preceding 12 months, 9207; actual number 
of latest issue, 9400. 1 certify that the statements 
made by me are correct and complete. Edward 
Hutchings Jr. 


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