DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY
Heber Doust Curtis became Director of the Observatories of the University and Chairman of the Department of Astronomy on October 1, 1930. Curtis had a clear directive and promise of financial support for developing a new site for an observatory and a new large telescope of world rank for astronomical research. Curtis died on January 9, 1942, just six months before reaching retirement age, without achieving any considerable progress toward completion of the tasks he had been hired to do. McGregor Fund of Detroit, however, had given the University of Michigan a disk of pyrex glass 2.5 meters in diameter for use in the construction of the reflecting telescope that Curtis had designed soon after becoming the Director of the Observatories.
Will Carl Rufus was made Acting Chairman to succeed Curtis. He served throughout the war years until reaching retirement furlough July 1, 1945. All of the members of the department served full time in war-related teaching and research and often were assigned to serve far from the campus and far from any University supervision. Rufus, however, assumed directorial duties with regard to the observatories and produced new designs and plans for the proposed large reflecting telescope. A part of Rufus's plans envisioned a cooperative development by the University of California and the University of Michigan, a type of organization that was to become popular in the postwar years under the name of "consortium." Perhaps Rufus's greatest achievement was the effecting of a complete integration of the McMath-Hulbert Observatory into the academic structure of the Department of Astronomy and the Literary College.