Roy Henry Garstang (1925–2009) was an English astrophysicist who was internationally known for his work on

light pollution Light pollution is the presence of any unwanted, inappropriate, or excessive artificial Visible spectrum, lighting. In a descriptive sense, the term ''light pollution'' refers to the effects of any poorly implemented lighting sources, during the ...

Family and early life

Garstang was born in

Southport, England Southport is a seaside town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. It lies on the West Lancashire coastal plain and the east coast of the Irish Sea, approximately north of Liverpool and southwest of Preston. At the ...

in September 1925 to Percy Brocklehurst and Eunice (Gledhill) Garstang. He attended

Cambridge University The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

on a

Caius College Gonville and Caius College, commonly known as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348 by Edmund Gonville, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and ...

scholarship. Due to the war, he completed three years of course work in two years, ultimately receiving his B.A. in 1946. He spent 1945 to 1946 as scientific officer at the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

at Farnborough, England and 1946 to 1948 as scientific officer at the Ministry of Works. Returning to Cambridge, he pursued his studies in mathematics receiving an M.A. in 1950 and his Ph.D. in 1954, under the supervision of D.R. Hartree. His thesis examined atomic transitions in astrophysics. He also received a Sc.D. from Cambridge in Physics and Chemistry in 1983.

Early work

Garstang started working at the

Yerkes Observatory Yerkes Observatory ( ) is an astronomical observatory located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, United States. The observatory was operated by the University of Chicago Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics from its founding in 1897 until 2018. O ...

while he was still enrolled in the Ph.D. program at Cambridge. During that time, he began to calculate atomic structures and transition probabilities for forbidden transitions, which was of special interest to astrophysicists. Upon the completion of his Ph.D., he started teaching at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...

and served as the assistant director for the

London Observatory London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Thame ...

. He also edited ''The Observatory'' magazine from 1953 through 1960. In 1964, Garstang headed to

Boulder, Colorado Boulder is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule city in Boulder County, Colorado, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 108,250 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the most ...

to join the faculty at the

University of Colorado, Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University o ...

. Soon after arriving, he was appointed Chairman of the

Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics JILA, formerly known as the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, is a physical science research institute in the United States. JILA is located on the University of Colorado Boulder campus. JILA was founded in 1962 as a joint institute ...

. He also served as the Director of the Division of Physics and Astro-Geophysics from 1979 to 1980 and the acting Director of the

Fiske Planetarium Fiske Planetarium is one of the largest planetariums in the United States, educating the public on astronomy and astrophysics since 1975. They offer a diverse range of fulldome films, live talks, laser and liquid sky music shows, as well as publ ...

from 1980 to 1981. During his career, he published over 50 papers, including calculations on neutral

technetium Technetium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Tc and atomic number 43. It is the lightest element whose isotopes are all radioactive. Technetium and promethium are the only radioactive elements whose neighbours in the sense ...

and line strengths for ionized

neon Neon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is the second noble gas in the periodic table. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with approximately two-thirds the density of ...

. He also calculated the energy levels and spectra of highly ionized species of iron, and spent time studying the effects of strong magnetic field on atomic spectra, ranging from the thousand gauss fields of sunspots to megagauss fields of

white dwarf A white dwarf is a Compact star, stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very density, dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place i ...

Late career

Later in his career, Garstang began to work on

. Between 1984 and 2007, he published 40 scientific papers concerning the phenomenon, and constructed a light pollution model which included an

ozone layer The ozone layer or ozone shield is a region of Earth's stratosphere that absorption (electromagnetic radiation), absorbs most of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. It contains a high concentration of ozone (O3) in relation to other parts of the a ...

, scattering of light by molecules and aerosols with improved variations with altitude,

curvature of the Earth Spherical Earth or Earth's curvature refers to the approximation of the figure of the Earth as a sphere. The earliest documented mention of the concept dates from around the 5th century BC, when it appears in the writings of Greek philosophers. ...

, and a dust layer of dust either volcanic or desert origin. The models he created have since become standard in the field, and led to efforts to reduce light pollution in urban areas.

References

External links

Archival collections

Roy Henry Garstang student notebooks, 1943-1951, Niels Bohr Library & Archives
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garstang, Roy Henry 1925 births 2009 deaths People from Southport Alumni of the University of Cambridge Fellows of the American Physical Society