Horace Welcome Babcock (September 13 1912 – August 29 2003) was an American astronomer. He was the son of Harold D. Babcock. He invented and built a number of astronomical instruments, and in 1953 was the first to propose the idea of adaptive optics. He specialized in spectroscopy and the study of magnetic fields of stars. He proposed the Babcock Model, a theory for the magnetism of sunspots. During World War II, he was engaged in radiation work at MIT and Caltech. After the war he began a productive collaboration with his father.
Honors
Awards
- Henry Draper Medal (1957)
- Eddington Medal (1958)
- Bruce Medal (1969)
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1970)
- George Ellery Hale Prize of the American Astronomical Society Solar Physics Division (1992)
Named after him
- Asteroid 3167 Babcock (jointly with his father)
- Babcock crater on the Moon is named only for his father
External links
- Bruce Medal page
- Awarding of Bruce Medal
- Awarding of RAS gold medal
- H.W. Babcock, "The Possibility of Compensating Astronomical Seeing", PASP 65 (1953) 229
Obituaries
PASP 116 (2004) 290(not available online yet, see [1])
