I walked in to work today, and found an email from my mother telling me her uncle passed away. I knew he had been sick and was in the hospital for a collapsed lung, but I was NOT expecting this. The world, as well as our family, has suffered a great loss.
My Uncle Art was a brilliant man. And I don’t mean that in a casual, oh look, he’s so smart, type of way. He was a genius.
I knew he had many accomplishments in his lifetime, but I never knew just exactly how many until I started researching him on the internet and most of the articles I found were WAY too smart for me to even understand.
Here is probably one of the best articles that I found, and even at that, it’s extremely outdated:
From the University of Chicago Alumni Magazine (December 1994)
Arthur Code, SM’47, PhD’50, has a lot of firsts to his name: the first telescope sent into space, the first maps of the spiral structure of the Milky Way, the first discoveries of the hydrogen clouds around comets, and the first proof of star formation in other galaxies. The University of Wisconsin astronomer received Chicago’s Professional Achievement Award in 1969 and was awarded NASA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, in 1992. At age 71, Code continues to advance his field: In February, yet another of his telescopes, the Wisconsin Ultraviolet Photo-Polarimeter Experiment, will be launched into space. WUPPE and two other major projects should keep him busy well beyond his official retirement next June.
After five decades in the field, his love of discovery remains strong. “For that mo-ment, you’re the only one in the world who knows that little secret of nature,” he says. “That’s a reward that goes beyond salaries, or medals, or acclaim. And then the next step is telling other people about it.”
After earning his Ph.D. from Chicago, Code taught briefly at the University of Virginia, at Wisconsin, and then at the California Institute of Technology. While he was at Cal Tech, soon after the Russians launched Sputnik, the National Academy of Sciences asked the scientific community to propose research applications for U.S. satellite launchings. Code suggested applying stellar-photometry methods to a space-based telescope, which could observe the ultraviolet light that doesn’t reach Earth’s surface.
In the meantime, Wisconsin offered him directorship of its Washburn Observatory and the position of astronomy department chair. Although there was no space astronomy program anywhere in 1958, Code felt that space-based telescopes were inevitable, and went to Wisconsin thinking, “You can’t do great ground-based astronomy from the Midwest, but you certainly can do space astronomy as well here as from California.” It was a self-fulfilling prophecy: Not only did Code establish Wisconsin’s Space Astronomy Laboratory, but his NAS proposal led to the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory-the first space telescope, launched in 1968. Code went on to direct a number of national astronomical organizations, including a stint as acting director of the Space Telescope Science Institute (which operates the Hubble Space Telescope).
Currently, Code devotes much of his time to WUPPE as the project’s principal investigator. A telescope with a spectro-polarimeter, WUPPE measures the polarized ultraviolet light from the interstellar medium and objects such as hot stars and active galaxies. First launched into space with the Astro observatory in December 1990, WUPPE is scheduled to go up again as part of Astro-2 on the shuttle Endeavor in February 1995. The project, Code says, should give a “better understanding of the nature of star formations” and, subsequently, of the nature of the universe.
Understanding the nature of the universe has been, in fact, Code’s grand strategy since deciding to be an astronomer back in grade school. As a seasoned researcher, however, he knows that understanding will come first in bits and pieces: “So many of the programs that I have worked on or been interested in are all little building blocks to trying to put that picture together.”-K.S.
But aside from being a brilliant, brilliant man, he was one of the kindest, sweetest men I have ever known. Whenever we had a family gathering (for whatever the reason), he was the one I sought out first to talk to.
I will always love and remember you Uncle Art! You will be greatly missed.
