Patrick Thaddeus

Patrick Thaddeus (June 6, 1932 – April 28, 2017) was an American professor and finished his career as the Robert Wheeler Willson Professor of Applied Astronomy Emeritus at Harvard University. He is best known for mapping carbon monoxide in the Milky Way galaxy and was responsible for the construction of the CfA 1.2 m Millimeter-Wave Telescope.

Early life and education Thaddeus was born on June 6, 1932, to Elizabeth and Victor Thaddeus. His mother divorced Thaddeus when he and his sister, Deirdre, were very young. She later remarried to Vincent Copeland.

He graduated from University of Delaware in 1953 with a Bachelor of Science degree. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship through which he attended the University of Oxford, graduating with a master's degree in theoretical physics in 1955. His doctoral work was at Columbia University, where he earned his Ph.D. under Charles Hard Townes in 1960 with a thesis titled Beam Maser Spectroscopy.

Career After earning his doctorate, Thaddeus stayed at Columbia University as a research associate in the Columbia Radiation Laboratory until 1961, when he took a position working for NASA at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where he remained until 1986. He also taught at Columbia University during that period, from 1965 until 1986. It was during his time at Columbia that the CfA 1.2 m Millimeter-Wave Telescope was built. In 1986, Thaddeus (along with the 1.2 meter telescope and other scientists on the team) moved to Harvard, where he remained for the rest of his teaching career and remained Professor Emeritus until his death in April 2017.

Thaddeus held a few other teaching positions during his career at institutions including State University of New York, Stony Brook (1966–1967), University of California, Berkeley (1968), and University of Cambridge (1983–1984).

Harvard astronomer Tom Dame, in collaboration with Thaddeus, discovered the Far 3 kpc Arm of the Milky Way.

Personal life

Thaddeus married the former Janice Farrar (daughter of John Chipman Farrar and Margaret Petherbridge Farrar) in 1963. Janice Farrar Thaddeus was a scholar, poet, editor, and former Harvard lecturer in English; she died of a stroke in 2001 at the age of 68. They have two children: Eva (b. 1965) and Michael (b. 1967), as well as two grandchildren.

Publications

Thaddeus authored or co-authored more than three hundred research papers and more than twenty invited papers in astronomy and physics.

Advisory committees "Until the war, astronomy was confined to about an octave, or factor of three, in wavelength, centered on the visual. And what we've done since then is just explode across the whole spectrum, so that now astronomy goes from very, very long radio wavelengths, meters and tens-of-meters long, down to gamma rays. And so to a great degree what we've been doing is just explode into these empty regions of frequency space, and in many ways we're still really just doing the survey work. Finding out what's there, and doing the basic mapping. Every time you go to a new wavelength band, the general rule is that you find a completely different aspect of nature in that information."Patrick Thaddeus, quoted in Stephen S. Hall's book Mapping the Next Millennium NASA Astrobiology Oversight Committee, 1999–2002 Center for Astrophysical Research in Antarctica (CARA), 1999– Chair: Task Group on Space Astronomy and Astrophysics, National Research Council, 1996–97 President's Visiting Committee, Caltech, 1995 Visiting Committee, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 1991–94; Chair 1994 Steering Committee, SAO Submillimeter Array, 1993– Director's Advisory Committee, NRAO Green Bank Telescope Project 1989–90 Astronomy Survey Committee 1989–90, Radio Astronomy Panel, Infrared Panel, and Theory and Laboratory Astrophysics Panel Scientific Organizing Committee, IAU Symposium No. 147, on Fragmentation of Molecular Clouds and Star Formation, Grenoble, 1990 National Radio Astronomy Observatory Ad Hoc Long–Range Planning Committee, 1988 NASA Management Operations Working Group for Infrared Astronomy, 1987–1990 International Organizing Committee, Cologne– Zermatt International Symposium on the Physics and Chemistry of Interstellar Clouds, Zermatt, 1988 Scientific Committee, Meeting on "Polycyclic Molecules and Astrophysics," Les Houches, 1986 Visiting Committee, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago, 1983 AURA Visiting Committee (Kitt Peak, Cerro Tololo, and Sacramento Peak Observatories), 1983–86 NASA Management Operations Working Group for Airborne Astronomy, 1982–1986 Visiting Committee, Haystack Observatory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982–85; Chair, 1985 Scientific Organizing Committee, Symposium on the Orion Nebula to Honor Henry Draper, New York, 1981 Visiting Committee, Hat Creek Observatory, University of California, 1981 Universities Research Association (URA), Astronomy Advisory Committee, 1979–81 NASA Space Science Advisory Committee, 1979 Astronomy Survey Committee, 1978–80; Chair, Radio Astronomy Panel; report published as Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1980s (National Academy Press, 1982;2) Submillimeter Space Telescope Working Group, 1977 Editorial Board, The Astrophysical Journal, 1976–80 Scientific Organizing Committee, IAU Symposium No. 75, on "Star Formation," Geneva, 1976 Visiting Committee, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 1973–76