Robert G. Aitken and His ADS: Double Star Oberver, Cataloguer, Statistician, and Observatory Director

Robert G. Aitken was a dynamical astronomer of the old school, a long-time visual double star observer. He was born in 1864 in Jackson, California, a small town in the Gold Country midway between Yosemite and Sacramento. His education at Williams College under Truman Safford; his early teaching career at Livermore College and the University of the Pacific; his simultaneous graduate reading course in mathematics; and his becoming a professional astronomer under the tutelage of Edward S. Holden and Edward E. Barnard at Lick Observatory will be described. Aitken made a systematic survey of the entire sky north of -30 degrees for double stars, joined by William J. Hussey for a time. It produced important new information on binary and multiple stars and their orbits. His book The Binary Stars and his New General Catalogue of Double Stars (ADS) were his monuments. Aitken was associate director of Lick Observatory from 1923 until 1930, while W. W. Campbell was simultaneously director and president of the University of California. Then Aitken was director himself from 1930 until he retired in 1935 and moved to Berkeley, where he continued writing until his death in 1951. Aitken was editor of the PASP for 51 years. He hoped that Gerard P. Kuiper would succeed him as the double star observer at Lick Observatory, but that was not to be. Aitken at various times held every office in the ASP, and was vice president, then president, of the AAS.