George Hale had an Elf as an Advisor

I first became aware of the “elf story” by watching a rerun episode of the X-Files last evening on television. I became intrigued and decided to investigate the story for myself.

Hale, George Ellery (1868-1938)

American astronomer and master fundraiser who, with Noyes and Millikan, was one of the founding fathers of Caltech. He talked streetcar magnate Charles Yerkes into financing Yerkes Observatory and its 40″ Clark refractor in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. In 1908, he built a 60″ telescope on Mount Wilson with financing from the Carnegie Institute. A 100″ telescope was placed on Mount Wilson in 1917 with money from Los Angeles hardware tycoon John Hooker.

Hale’s greatest project, however, was construction of the 200″ telescope on Mount Palomar which, unfortunately, he did not see completed before his death. The telescope was named the Hale telescope in his honor. Hale also detected strong magnetic field in sunspots in 1908 by observing Zeeman splitting of spectral lines. He invented the spectroheliograph, which he used to photograph the Sun in the line of Ca. He also built an elaborate solar observatory in his back yard.

Hale suffered from serious psychological problems. He suffered from chronic headaches, insomnia, and frequent episodes of insanity. He had an imaginary elf who acted as his advisor. He used to take time off to spend a few months at a sanatorium in Maine. These problems forced him to resign as director of Mount Wilson (Preston 1987). — from Eric Weisstein’s World of Scientific Biography, at wolfram.com.

Beginning at age 42, Hale received regular visits from an elf who advised him on numerous matters, including the administration of Mt. Wilson and the planning for Palomar. Some attribute the story to a biography of Hale ”Explorer of the Universe” (1966), by Helen Wright, and claim that although the rest of the book is excellent and accurate, that this small part of Hale’s story is a complete myth. But was Hale really insane and was the “elf” really imaginary? I wonder…