Keith Pierce

Austin Keith Pierce was born October 2, 1918, in Tacoma, Washington. His father, Tracy Pierce, was a mathematician at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and an amateur astronomer.[1][2]

From 1936 to 1938, he studied at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, before transferring to the University of California, Berkeley where in 1940 he obtained a BSc in astronomy.[1][2] In 1941 he married Mildred Buell, with whom he went on to have three children.[1]

During the Second World War, Pierce worked on uranium isotope separation as part of the Manhattan Project, first at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and then at Oak Ridge in Tennessee.[1][2]

In 1945 he returned to Berkeley, obtaining his doctorate in 1948 under C. Donald Shane.[1][2] He then worked at the University of Michigan for astronomer Robert McMath. McMath obtained federal funding for a large solar telescope and chose Pierce to lead the project.[3] Pierce gained observing experience at the Mount Wilson and McMath–Hulbert solar observatories and toured European solar observatories to inform the design of the new telescope.[3]

Kitt Peak Observatory was chosen for the site so in 1958 Pierce and his family relocated to Tucson, Arizona.[3] Upon completion in 1962 the McMath solar telescope was the largest solar telescope in the world.[4]

Pierce would direct the solar division of Kitt Peak for 16 years.[3] In 1979 he married medical anthropologist Trudy Griffin.[1] In 1992 the McMath telescope was rededicated as the McMath–Pierce Solar Telescope.[4][5]

Pierce died of cancer on March 11, 2005, in Tucson, Arizona.[5][6][7]