Other Events:

• Education: University of Toledo, B.S.; University of Michigan, M.S. PhD.
• Occupation: Professor

Notes:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Albert Hiltner (1914-1991) was an American astronomer, noted for his work leading up to the discovery of interstellar polarization. He was an early practitioner of precision stellar photometry, and a pioneering observer of the optical counterparts of celestial x-ray sources. Director of the Yerkes Observatory for many years, while there he designed and built a rotatable telescope for polarization studies and developed photometric instrumentation. He was the acting director of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, then president of the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy from 1968 until 1971, and was appointed as a director of the University of Michigan in 1970; a post he held until 1982. He established MDM Observatory and led the construction of the Hiltner Telescope which is named for him.

http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/full/seri/BAAS./0024//0001327.000.html
SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)
Title: Obituary: William Albert Hiltner, 1914-1991
Authors: Code, A. D.
Journal: Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society ; vol. 24, no. 4, p. 1326-1327
Bibliographic Code: 1992BAAS...24.1326C
by Arthur D. Code, University of Wisconsin
William Albert Hiltner was born on August 27, 1914 on his parents? farm in North Creek, Ohio, some 45 miles southwest of Toledo. He received his early education in the one room school house that served this farm community. Al acquired his interest in astronomy while still very young, apparently from an amateur astronomer who lived near the family farm. He purchased a small telescope and was disappointed when he found that Vega still looked like a ?star? despite the magnification afforded by the telescope. Al graduated from a small high school in a graduating class of 17 in 1932. The following year he entered the University of Toledo where he majored in physics and math. It was in his senior year that he decided to make astronomy his life work. Commenting on that choice many years later Al said ?One makes a decision to do astronomy when one is helpless to prevent it!?
He received his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Toledo in 1937 and started graduate studies in astronomy at the University of Michigan. This was not the end of his interest in Toledo, where he frequently spent his weekends until he married Ruth Kreider, a former classmate. He returned again to Toledo thirty years later to accept an honorary DSc. degree from this, his first alma mater. At the University of Michigan Al obtained an MS degree in 1938 and a PhD in astrophysics in 1942. His thesis research was on the spectra of Be stars, with emphasis on determining color temperatures through accurate spectrophotometry. For this research he and Robely Williams constructed the University of Michigan microphotometer. Later they published the Photometric Atlas of Stellar Spectra. As a National Research Council Fellow he continued his association with the University of Michigan and observed and carried out a productive research program at McDonald Observatory. In 1943 he was appointed an Instructor at Yerkes Observatory and he and his family, which now included two daughters, move to Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, a village only slightly larger than North Creek, Ohio.
During the early days at Yerkes he continued his spectroscopic studied of Be stars and some of the other pathological cases that had been Otto Struve?s favorites. During World War II Al was engaged in the production of front surface mirrors, and in military optics design and modeling, an experience which influenced his later interest in astronomical instrumentation. It was following the end of the war that I came to Yerkes Observatory as a graduate student and had the opportunity to work with Al on two projects. Otto Struve had suggested that Al develop a program in photoelectric photometry at Yerkes and I was appointed his assistant. We started with a simple system employing a sensitive galvanometer to record the output of a photomultiplier. It was my task to sit near the 40 inch pier, in the basement, in front of the galvanometer scale. From the observing floor above Al would call out the instructions to read the position of the dancing spot of light on the scale. From this humble beginning Al brought photometry and later polarimetry and electronic imaging at Yerkes into the modern era.
In 1945 Hiltner and Chandrasekhar went to Canada to photograph a total eclipse of the sun. This represented a unique collaboration with the theorist Chandrasekhar, for I believe that the paper showing those photographs remains the only observational research paper ever published by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Another interaction between Chandra and Al, however, had a much greater impact on astronomy. Chandrasekhar had predicted that when electron scattering was the dominant contributor to the stellar opacity the limb intensity would show linear polarization reaching 11% for pure electron scattering. Al set out to measure this polarization in eclipsing binary systems. He found polarization, but it did not change with binary phase. Indeed many early type stars showed polarization in the several percent range. As the data collected, it became clear that the polarization was produced in the interstellar medium. In 1949, in back-to-back papers in Science, Al Hiltner and John Hall announced the discovery of interstellar polarization. Interstellar polarization gave the first evidence for galactic magnetic fields and a powerful diagnostic on the nature of interstellar grains.
Over the years Al published over 200 papers in scientific journals. While he continued measurements of polarization, photometry and spectral classification of early type stars he was most interested in binary stars. He made valuable contributions to our understanding of Wolf-Rayet binaries, and after the discovery of x-ray binaries he turned his attention to the study of the optical radiation from these x-ray sources. He enjoyed sharing this research with students and young astronomers and imparting to them the enthusiasm that he himself had for scientific inquiry.
As Al progressed through the ranks, from Instructor to Professor at the University of Chicago, he took on increased responsibilities as both in instrument innovator and policy maker. Starting in 1959 and continuing until his departure from Yerkes Observatory in 1971, he was the University of Chicago?s representative on the Board of Directors of AURA. The facilities which now cover the summit of Kitt Peak owe much to the efforts of the early Board members. He played an important role in the development of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile. In 1966 CTIO was without a director and Al served as one of the interim directors until the appointment of Victor Blanco in 1967. He also served as President of AURA from 1968 through 1971. His departure from the Board following his term of office was the result of his departure from Yerkes Observatory after 27 years of productive and diverse activity.
Al returned to the place where he had received his training in 1970 to become chairman of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Michigan. His ability to imagine and to make things happen led to a fruitful collaborative agreement between Michigan, Dartmouth and MIT. The MDM consortium started with the move of the Michigan 1.3 meter telescope and later the construction of a 2.4 meter telescope, which was designed by Al and now bears his name.
When Al retired from the University of Michigan in 1985 it was not just be a professor emeritus but rather to take on a new challenge. The Carnegie Institution had embarked on a collaborative effort to produce a very large southern hemisphere telescope. In 1986 Al joined the staff of the Carnegie Observatories to become the Project Manager for the Magellan Telescope Project a program to build an 8-meter telescope to be placed in Chile.
One of the characteristics which his younger colleagues have remarked on was his ability to keep up-to-date, to keep learning, and as such it was not at all remarkable that he had been chosen to head the Magellan Project. This characteristic, however, applied to his personal as well as his professional life. During his years at Yerkes Observatory he enjoyed sailing on Lake Geneva and canoeing with the family in northern Wisconsin in spite of the fact that he had not learned to swim in his youth. He did learn to swim, however, at the age of 64 and took great pride in that accomplishment, which he enjoyed the rest of his life.
For the last ten years of his life Al had been under the care of a cardiologist for a deteriorating heart condition. He had resisted surgery until finally in September of 1991 he decided to risk surgery as a last resort. They were unable to get his heart to beat on its own after removing the support system. He is survived by his wife Ruth, and four children, two sons and two daughters.
Al was a great success as a scientist, a teacher, a builder, and a scientific leader, and went out of his way to instill these attributes in the younger astronomers who had the opportunity to work with him.

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhlead/umich-bhl-921097?rgn=main;view=text
Michigan Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, William A. Hiltner papers, 1942-1991
Biography
William A. Hiltner was born in North Creek, Ohio on August 27, 1914. He received a B.S. in math and physics from the University of Toledo in 1937. Subsequently, he earned a M.S. degree in 1938 and a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1942 from the University of Michigan. In 1967 he was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Toledo. From 1942 through 1970, Hiltner was on the faculty at the University of Chicago and during parts of his tenure there was the director of Yerkes Observatory (1963-1966) and acting director of Cerro Tololo InterAmerican Observatory (1966-1967) in Chile. Hiltner's tenure at the University of Michigan began in 1970 when he was appointed chairman of the Department of Astronomy and director of University Observatories. He was chairman of the department until 1983 and retired from the University of Michigan in 1985.
The focus of Hiltner's research was work on photoelectric photometry which led to the discovery of interstellar polarization. Additionally, his work enabled the identification of a number of X-ray sources and provided the first evidence for a magnetic field pervading the Milky Way galaxy. To help with his ground breaking research, Hiltner designed and developed new instrumental techniques and applications. During his tenure at the University of Michigan, Hiltner was responsible for the establishment of the McGraw-Hill Observatory on Kitt Peak in Arizona which involved the moving of a 1.3-meter reflector from Dexter, Michigan to Arizona and the construction and implementation of a 2.4-meter telescope, which has now been named in his honor. During his lifetime, Hiltner produced more than 200 research papers, book chapters, and other scientific contributions (a partial bibliography may be found in the topical files under "Letters of Merit").
Hiltner was a member of the International Astronomical Union; the American Astronomical Society; the Astronomical Society of the Pacific; and, the Optical Society of America. He was also a founder and extremely active member of the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) which runs the National Optical Astronomy Observatories in Arizona and Chile.
William A. Hiltner died September 30, 1991.

Name:
More information about William Albert Hiltner's family at our Hiltner genealogy site: https://hiltner.com/hiltner/index.php
and William Albert's individual page: https://hiltner.com/hiltner/getperson.php?personID=I1&tree=tree1

Birth:
born at home

William married Ruth Moyer Kreider on 12 Aug 1939 in Reformed Church in Toledo, OH. Ruth (daughter of Rev Henry Royer Kreider and Mary Elizabeth Moyer) was born on 23 Apr 1916 in Toledo, Lucas County, OH; died on 05 Feb 2011 in Cleveland, OH; was buried in Saint Peters Lutheran and Reformed Cemetery, Rebersburg, Centre County, PA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events:

• Education: Reed College, B.S.; Oregon State University, PhD.
• Occupation: Professor

Notes:

http://blog.case.edu/case-news/2010/09/10/pioneering_engineer_professor_anne_hiltner_dies
Anne Hiltner, Case Western Reserve?s first female professor of engineering and an internationally recognized scientist and engineer, died Monday after a courageous battle with illness. She was 69.

?Our campus has lost a remarkable academic leader,? President Barbara R. Snyder said. ?As a woman in the sciences and engineering, Professor Hiltner?s entire career served as an inspiration to others. As a researcher of extraordinary ingenuity and accomplishment, she transformed her field. Her impact on the university, and on students and colleagues worldwide, cannot be overstated. We will miss her.?

Professor Hiltner came to the university in 1967, after earning a doctorate in physical chemistry from Oregon State University. She served as a research associate for one year with chemistry professor Irvin M. Krieger, and then joined the laboratory of professor Eric Baer, who was chairman of the Department of Macromolecular Science at the time. The connection with professor Baer proved fortuitous, as the pair forged a powerful scientific collaboration that persisted to the present. They also discovered personal compatibility, marrying in 1999.

?The dream of every faculty member is to try harder, harder,? Baer said. ?She always climbed mountains.?

From the very beginning, Baer recalled, his colleague was committed to excellence. Whether working in the laboratory, writing papers or advising graduate students, Hiltner remained laser-focused. ?She was a projects person,? Baer said.

In 1974, Hiltner became the university?s first female member of the engineering faculty when she became an assistant professor of macromolecular engineering. Seven years later she founded the Center for Applied Polymer Research (CAPRI), an organization that encouraged collaboration across disciplines and ultimately laid the groundwork for the program that she considered her greatest achievement, the awarding of a 10-year, $40 million National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center (STC), the Center for Layered Polymeric Systems (CLiPS).

The NSF received more than 160 applications for STC funding, and gave awards to six. CLiPS is the university?s first and only STC, and involves several other university partnerships nationwide as well as collaboration with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

?The STC made her feel she had reached to the top of Everest,? Baer said. ?She really reached the pinnacle of her career.?

Over her career, Professor Hiltner published nearly 400 articles in peer-reviewed journals, and received multiple honors from professional scientific organizations. She was a Fellow of the American Chemical Society?s Division of Polymeric Materials, the American Institute for Medical Biological Engineering, and the High Polymer Physics Division of the American Physical Society.

In 2001, Professor Hiltner was the recipient of the American Chemical Society?s Cooperative Research Award in Polymer Science and Engineering. In 2004, Case Western Reserve named her the Herbert Henry Dow Professor of Science and Engineering. That same year, the Society of Plastics Engineers? Thermoplastic Materials and Foam Division presented Professor Hiltner its annual outstanding achievement award. In 2008, she received the American Chemical Society?s Award in Applied Polymer Science. In announcing the honor, the society cited Professor Hiltner?s ?pioneering contributions in understanding the connections between hierarchical structure and properties of polymers, their blends and composites.?

Even with all of the recognition, Baer said, ?her greatest joy was her involvement with the graduate students. She loved the creative, productive side of her work.?

Hiltner did not want formal remembrances or donations made in her name, Baer said. The greatest tribute others can make to Hiltner, he explained, is to continue her creative mission through their academic work.

Posted by: David Wilson, September 10, 2010