Yerkes Observatory

373 W. Geneva Street
Williams Bay, WI 53191

In 1892, a brilliant, young professor of astrophysics at the then-new University of Chicago learned of two 40-inch telescope lens blanks collecting dust in a warehouse. They were just what George Ellery Hale was looking for to build the observatory of his dreams. He convinced the university’s president, William Rainey Harper, to acquire the lenses and secure what was essentially a blank check from Chicago tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes to build a different kind of observatory.

Yerkes Observatory, housing not only a telescope but also laboratories, workshops, and libraries, first opened its dome to the night sky in 1897, and soon attracted the brightest lights of astronomical science.

For nearly a century, a virtual who’s who of astronomy surveyed outer space through the Yerkes Great Refractor. Sherburne W. Burnham cataloged 13,665 star systems. Edward Barnard discovered the large dark clouds of the Milky Way. Optician Frank Ross introduced the wide-angle lens to astronomy. Edwin Hubble photographed the first evidence of the expansion of the universe. Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first Chief of Astronomy, did her graduate work here, as did Carl Sagan.