R.C. Bless

After receiving his Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Michigan, Robert C. Bless spent his career at the Astronomy Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  He was a member of the Wisconsin group responsible for planning and operating the payload in the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, the first successful stellar space observatory.  He was later involved in technical studies in support of what became the Hubble Space Telescope, and his proposal for a high speed photometer became one of the first-generation space instruments in the Hubble Space telescope.  Bless served on many NSF and NASA administrative and review panels and was the first Chair of the Gemini Board of Directors.  Over a long career of teaching, he became increasingly interested in the historical origins of astronomical concepts, ideas, and techniques, and integrated many of these in his teaching of elementary survey courses in astronomy and in this book.