Henry Albers, professor of astronomy at Vassar College for over 30 years, died Sunday, March 29, 2009 in Fairhope.
For his work at Vassar, where he held the Maria Mitchell Chair, he received the first Maria Mitchell Women in Science Award for his inspiration of women astronomers.
He said "In the final analysis it is the students who bring the joy into teaching." At the same time, as chairman of the long-range planning committee at Vassar College, he was the author of the proposal that the college move to become coeducational. In retirement, he gathered and edited the journals and letters of Maria Mitchell, the first American woman astronomer.
In 1966 he made the first of nine observing runs to conduct spectroscopic research at The Interamerican Observatory in Cerro Tololo, Chile, a site so arid that he described it as being reached by "turning at the cactus." The results of his research including "Infrared Study of the Southern Milky Way for Carbon Stars" were funded by the National Science Foundation. Also under NSF sponsorship, he worked on a team to produce six volumes of up-to-date, hands-on astronomy materials for young people.
He was born in Andover, Mass., in 1925 to a German immigrant pastry baker who ran away from Hamburg at age 12, changed his Prussian name, and signed on to serve as a ship’s cookie. His father baked the celebratory cake for the Russo-Japanese Peace conference and baked for every president from Teddy Roosevelt to Eisenhower. His mother, Edna Oliver, came from a long-time Maine sea-faring family, and his five sisters credited his early fascination with the stars to this association with the sea.
After graduation from Punchard High School, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, serving in the Po Valley campaign as a radar and radio technician. Returning, he became part of Harvard’s Class of 1950. The largest class ever at that time, it is still referred to as "The Great Middle Class." He received his MA at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, and then entered Case Institute of Technology, where he earned the first PhD from Warner Swasey Observatory in 1956. He taught at Butler University and Macalester College, before beginning work at Vassar in 1958.
Upon his retirement to Falmouth, Mass., in 1991, he continued his passionate teaching of math and physics in the town's Volunteers in Public Schools Program and received the "Volunteer of the Year" Award. In demand as a guest lecturer he sailed on 14 cruises throughout the world. Frequently he would find Vassar alums and retired faculty in his audience.
In 1998 he moved to Fairhope. There he continued his participation in teaching, served on the board of the Eastern Shore Institute of Life Long Learning, and worked with the Friends of the Library, as he had in Falmouth.
The death was attributed to complications of Parkinson's disease due to pneumonia. The University of Alabama at Birmingham has accepted the full body donation of the deceased for scientific research, including their new brain study.
Survivors include his wife of 59 years, Wilma Clarice Smith Albers; three children, Catherine of Los Angeles, Christina of New Orleans, and Henry Peter of San Francisco; and two grandchildren, Henry Edward and Sarah Anne Kuczynski.
The family requests memorial donations be made to the Fairhope Unitarian Fellowship.
