Horace Welcome Babcock

Horace Welcome Babcock (born September 13, 1912, Pasadena, California, U.S.—died August 29, 2003, Santa Barbara) was an American astronomer who, with his father, Harold Delos Babcock, invented the solar magnetograph, an instrument allowing detailed observation of the Sun’s magnetic field.

Horace Babcock attended the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the University of California. He worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at the California Institute of Technology before joining the staff of Mount Wilson and Palomar Mountain observatories in 1946; he served as director of the observatories from 1964 to 1978. In the 1950s, working with his father, he developed the solar magnetograph; using the device, the two men demonstrated the existence of the Sun’s general field and discovered magnetically variable stars. Babcock’s other work included studies of the glow of the night sky, the rotation of galaxies, and telescope design. In the early 1970s he helped establish the Las Campanas Observatory in the Chilean Andes.