Back in 2014, I did some research on Henrietta Swope, so I could give her a significant Wikipedia entry. I think of her whenever I'm at LCO, because, of course, the first telescope here is named for her (aside: it was used last night by LCO astronomer Nidia Morrell - I'm embarrassed to say I don't think Nidia has ever blogged for us here). In fact, one of the original suggestions that Johanna Teske gave for the name of this blog was "Spirit of Swope."
Swope gave the gift that allowed Carnegie to develop LCO. I just looked up the magnitude of that original gift -- $650,000. What I hadn't done before was use an inflation calculator to convert 1967 to 2022 dollars. There's an inflation rate of 791% between then and now, which would make $650K into $5.8M. According to the Carnegie Yearbook, the total bequests she gave were $1.45M through her death in 1981 and a final bequest check from her estate in 1983. I've long thought the unit of wealth should be the telescope!
Here is an article about Swope from the 1983 Carnegie Institution Yearbook:
An unexpected pleasure of looking at that article again was seeing the photo that included Jean Mueller. Jean was working at Palomar when I was a graduate student, as she was finishing the 2nd Palomar Sky Survey (photographic plates!) on the 48-inch Oschin telescope that is now the Zwicky Transient Facility telescope. Later, she was also an operator at the 200-inch Hale Telescope when I was doing my thesis. She also hunted comets with great enthusiasm. I always enjoyed talking to her, learning from her, and having her run the telescope. I'm happy to find that she also has a Wikipedia entry!
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