Horace W. Babcock

Horace Welcome Babcock (September 13, 1912 – August 29, 2003) was an American astronomer. He was the son of Harold D. Babcock.

Babcock invented and built a number of astronomical instruments, and in 1953 was the first to propose the idea of adaptive optics. He specialized in spectroscopy and the study of magnetic fields of stars. He proposed the Babcock Model, a theory for the magnetism of sunspots.

During World War II, he was engaged in radiation work at MIT and Caltech. After the war he began a productive collaboration with his father. His undergraduate studies were at Caltech and his doctorate from University of California, Berkeley.

Babcock's doctoral thesis contained one of the earliest indications of dark matter. He reported measurements of the rotation curve for Andromeda which suggested that the mass-to-luminosity ratio increases radially. He, however, attributed it to either absorption of light within the galaxy or modified dynamics in the outer portions of the spiral and not to any form of missing matter.

He was director of the Palomar Observatory for Caltech from 1964 to 1978.

Awards

• Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences (1957)
• Eddington Medal (1958)
• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1959)
• Bruce Medal (1969)
• Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1970)
• George Ellery Hale Prize of the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division (1992)

Named after him

• Asteroid 3167 Babcock (jointly with his father)
• Babcock crater on the Moon is named only for his father

• "Henry Draper Medal". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 24 February 2011. 
• "Book of Members, 1780-2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 14 April 2011. 
• "Past Winners of the Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal". Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Retrieved 24 February 2011. 
• "Winners of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society". Royal Astronomical Society. Retrieved 24 February 2011.