No. 1 Amateur

Gustavus Wynne Cook of Philadelphia furnishes a shining example of what a rich businessman can do with his hobbies. On his estate in the Philadelphia suburbs he has the world's most elaborate private astronomical observatory. His 28 1/2-in. telescope, installed in 1932, is the most powerful possessed by an amateur. He has been privileged to call himself "Dr." Cook since last June when the University of Pennsylvania made him Doctor of Science. Gustavus Wynne Cook is president of South Chester Tube Co. and of South Chester Terminal & Warehousing Co., director of a national bank, two trust companies, a sugar refinery, an abrasive wheel factory. Most of his fortune he made from the tube company, which manufactures oil well casings and pipelines. He took over its management in 1901, is now sole owner. Dr. Cook's cluster of green-&-white observatory buildings contain equipment worth $100,000, represent a total investment of $200,000. Last summer, at a cost of some $9,000, he acquired the world's biggest star camera, weighing more than two tons. It has a 61-in. lens, takes pictures 20 by 24 in.

(bigger than a page of newsprint), covers 1/40 of the visible sky at each exposure, shows about 400,000 stars on one plate. With this giant apparatus Dr. Cook intends to photograph the entire sky. After six months of precise adjustments, the camera got into action just before New Year's Day. Since then thick weather has ruined every night but a few for sky-map-ping, but last week three plates had been successfully exposed and developed. Thirty-seven more plates will be needed to mop up the Northern sky. Then Dr.

Cook will dismantle his equipment, take it and his associates somewhere in the Southern hemisphere, probably Argentina, to do the Southern sky. "I want to produce the finest star atlas ever made," said this ambitious amateur last week, "and pve a copy to every important observatory in the world.

And we'll do it if we live that long!" Biggest Cook telescope, the 28 1/2-incher, is currently being used by Dr.

Cook's professional astronomer, Dr. Orren Mohler, 28 (University of Michigan), in connection with a photoelectric Geiger-Miiller counter which records the ultraviolet radiation of distant stars by a series of staccato clicks.

The camera work is done on a part-time basis by Lewis P.

Tabor, a science instructor at Episcopal Academy who, wearing a skating cap and sheepskin coat, "shoots" on fair nights from 7 o'clock to n. Dr. I. M. Levitt of Franklin Institute comes out every day to make solar observations on the Cook spectrohelioscope. These data are sent to the Paris Observatory which collects solar reports from all over the world for the International Astronomical Union. Gustavus Wynne Cook is an extremely able and versatile craftsman. In his roomy machine shop on the third floor of "Roslyn House," he made a three-inch star transit of a new type, constructed the motordriven clockwork for his biggest telescope. He has made so many ship models (more than 100) that his wife is hard put to find room for them.. . Born in Philadelphia nearly 70 years ago as a bank president's son, he became interested in astronomy at the age of 10 when a clergyman told him the Greek legends of the constellations. He attended Eastburn Academy, took night courses in architecture and engineering at Franklin Institute, worked in a medical laboratory and an engraving shop, studied art for three years, still does some work with watercolor and oils. Another of his interests is growing fancy orchids, another is music.

Urbane, affable, gregarious, he likes good Scotch, good cigars, good dinners, Stilton cheese, seldom appears without a white carnation in his lapel. Years ago after making long telescope observations, with a glass of Scotch & soda for company, he used to dream that he was suspended in interstellar space at a temperature of Absolute Zero. Lately such nightmares have troubled him less frequently.

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