BoV Chair Randy Henry
BoV Chair's Message: Honoring David Lambert's Decade of Leadership
Last August, McDonald Observatory Director David Lambert sent the following email, announcing his decision to retire as director of McDonald Observatory, to the faculty, researchers, and staff of the Texas Astronomy Program, as well as to the members of the Board of Visitors Executive Committee:
Colleagues:
Earlier this month, I told the Dean that I wished to return to the Faculty by August 31, 2014. By then, I will have completed more than a decade in administrative roles as Chair and Director. With the coming freedom from administration, I expect to be able to devote more time to research, especially to using Dan Jaffe's infrared spectrograph IGRINS on the Harlan J. Smith telescope.
At this time, I should like to express my great thanks to everyone who has assisted in the running of the Observatory in recent years. In particular, I wish to recognize the senior staff: Joel Barna, Tom Barnes, Anita Cochran, Dotty Frasch, Gary Hill, Herman Kriel, Phillip MacQueen, Carolyn Porter, Sandi Preston and Matt Shetrone.
I thank too the Department Chairs -- Don Winget, Neal Evans and Dan Jaffe -- for their cooperation in strengthening our Astronomy Program. And an especial thank you to my Executive Assistant, Elizabeth Donihoo.
Linda Hicke, Dean of the College of Natural Sciences, has appointed a committee to find a new director before the September 2014 deadline. Dr. Chris Sneden, who is the Rex G. Baker, Jr., and McDonald Observatory Centennial Professor in Astronomy, chairs the search committee. Other members are Dr. Dean Appling, the Lester J. Reed Professor in Biochemistry and an Associate Dean of the College of Natural Sciences; Dr. Anita Cochran, McDonald Observatory Assistant Director; University of Arizona faculty member Dr. Marcia Rieke; Dr. Matthew Shetrone, Senior Research Scientist and Hobby-Eberly Telescope Facility Manager; Dr. J. Craig Wheeler, the Samuel T. & Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor in Astronomy; and Dr. Don Winget, the Harlan J. Smith Centennial Professor in Astronomy. I will serve on the committee, representing the Board of Visitors.
David Lambert was already recognized as one of the world’s most eminent astronomers when he became Director of McDonald Observatory in 2003, replacing Frank Bash. He has been an extraordinarily effective leader for the Observatory.
David L. Lambert
A principal part of his legacy will be that he saw the importance of HETDEX and made it a central priority for McDonald Observatory starting in 2003 and 2004. Dark Energy had only been discovered a few years before. The changes proposed for HETDEX, Lambert saw, would enable the HET to make spectroscopic-survey observations faster than any other facility in the world and to make a unique contribution to understanding dark energy.
HETDEX is the most ambitious (and expensive) undertaking since the Observatory’s founding in 1939. Lambert guided HETDEX from its earliest stages until today, as project construction nears completion.
Lambert provides an update on HETDEX in this issue of the BoV E-News. He writes that there have been some technical challenges in the last year, which will delay the start of observations until early 2014. The unique promise of HETDEX is unchanged by that delay — it will make critical dark energy observations that no competing project can, it will open up vast new areas of astronomical research, and it will make history in the process.
HETDEX has been a team effort from the start, with many people working to realize it, many generous funders (including BoV members), and excellent partners in the U.S. and in Europe. Still, none of what has been accomplished to date -- and all the future promise of HETDEX -- would have happened without the dedication and leadership of David Lambert as a visionary, an administrator, and a fundraiser.
Lambert has also pushed forward other improvements to facilities at McDonald Observatory that are too numerous to list fully here, and an enormous expansion of the programs for Texas teachers and schoolchildren offered by the Observatory’s Education and Outreach Office. Looking beyond HETDEX, he had the foresight to make McDonald Observatory one of the founding partners planning the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), and he committed McDonald Observatory funds, proceeds from endowments (which had been created by BoV members and others), and donations that he raised for crucial early support that allowed casting of GMT’s first giant mirror.
It’s worth noting that the Observatory is primarily funded by two special line items in the State of Texas Budget — line items that were increased to help with HETDEX for two happy biennia in the mid-2000s, but that have since been cut significantly (with more cuts all but inevitable during the next Legislative Session in 2013). Lambert deserves our thanks for leading during this tumultuous time.
In 2014, with the observatory set to celebrate its 75th anniversary and with HETDEX starting observations early in the year, there will be an important transition, made all the more significant by David Lambert’s retirement. I know how dedicated he has been and remains to making McDonald Observatory the best it can be. I hope you’ll join me in thanking him for his efforts, in congratulating him on his successes, and in celebrating his leadership between now and September 2014.
[Randy Henry]
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