Colorful Director

Otto Struve, the founding director of McDonald Observatory, poses in his Russian Army uniform in this 1917 portrait. Struve, a fourth-generation astronomer, was born 125 years ago in present-day Ukraine. He served in the Russian Army during World War I, then with the White Army in the fight against the Bolsheviks. Afterward, he became a refugee in Turkey, working odd jobs and relying on relief agencies for food and clothing. He came to the United States in 1921 as a staff astronomer at the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory. In 1932, he helped work out an agreement in which the University of Texas would build McDonald Observatory and the University of Chicago would run it, with Struve directing both McDonald and Yerkes. [Yerkes Observatory/University of Chicago, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives]