1992 Compton GRO Symposium

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was one of NASA's Four Great Observatories (and second to be launched after the Hubble Space Telescope), launched by the Space Shuttle in April, 1991.

In the fall of 1992, a symposium on results from the first year of the mission was held at Washington University, in part to commemmorate the centennial of the birth of Arthur Holly Compton, who had performed his Nobel Prize-winning research at Wash U in the 1920s.

The meeting attracted roughly 300 scientists from all over the world from the at-the-time fairly small community of gamma ray astrophysics researchers.

Michael was chair of the Local Organizing Committee for this meeting, handling logistics (campus venues, food, tourist excursions, etc) as well as science-oriented issues.

In addition, he was the co-editor of the proceedings of the meeting, a 1230 page, 2.5" thick book of scientific papers. Michael's remarks are found on p22 (of 24) of this link. (The other co-editors were Neil Gehrels, Project Scientist of the Compton GRO mission, and Daryl Macomb, a staff scientist, both resident at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. (Aside: This is where David has worked for 30 years, too.))

In the fall of 1992, to coincide with the centennial and the symposium, the Washington University Magazine published two articles in the same issue: The cover story "The Compton Effects: The Legacy of Arthur Holly Compton" and "Alumni News: Exploring the Heavens" (about CGRO, with Michael's former PhD students and other WU alumni now at NASA)

An additional article about the symposium was published by the Post-Dispatch in December 1992: "New Eyes on the Universe". (Michael is quoted at the end of the article.)

(As an aside, Michael knew Compton, who had returned to Wash U (from the University of Chicago) to serve as chancellor for eight years (1946-1954). Compton appears in the 1961 annual physics department photo, shown in the video visible on the main Physics Department page on this site. Michael also spoke about Compton's role as chancellor in this 2005 video.)