Scholarship fund is announced by group at tribute for Terzian

Professor Yervant Terzian, center, holds a portrait of 12 planetary nebulae -- the focus of his first research paper -- presented to him by his former students Bruce Balick, professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle, right, and Arsen Hajian, a radioastronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., left. Photographs by Nicola Kountoupes/University Photography

By David Brand

A group of about 150 astronomy enthusiasts, the Friends of Astronomy, has raised $442,493 to establish permanent scholarships at Cornell for two to five undergraduates majoring in physics or astronomy.

The group, largely made up of Cornell alumni supporting the work of the Cornell Department of Astronomy, made the announcement Saturday at a banquet held to honor Yervant Terzian, the departing chair of the department and the James A. Weeks Professor of Physical Sciences, on his 60th birthday. The awards will be called the Yervant Terzian Scholarships.

Earlier in the day, at a scientific symposium held to honor Terzian, Philip Lewis, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, announced that the board of trustees is expected to name Terzian the next holder of the David C. Duncan Professorship in the Physical Sciences, the position held by Terzian's colleague and friend, the late Carl Sagan.

"Yervant's multiple and far-reaching contributions are, I believe, unique in their capacity to condense the components of the university's greatness in the work of a single individual," commented Lewis.

The announcement of the scholarship fund topped a day of surprises, emotion and reminiscences by colleagues and former students about Terzian's 20 years as chair of the department -- possibly, said Lewis, the longest period of continual appointment in a department chair's position in the history of Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences. The Friends of Astronomy, a nationwide group first inaugurated by the department in 1992, originally set out to raise about $100,000 for a scholarship fund. After the announcement by Robert Cowie of Ithaca, the group's chair, Terzian commented, "I'm speechless." He thanked "an outstanding group of inquisitive Cornell alumni" for their gift.

The first surprise of the day came at the opening of the daylong symposium, "Observing the Universe," during a talk by Bruce Balick, Terzian's first graduate student who is now professor of astronomy at the University of Washington, Seattle. Balick's talk was on planetary nebulae, glowing shells of gas around very hot stars. He recalled that Terzian's first research paper in the early 1960s concerned observations of 12 nebulae, and he presented his former mentor with a framed portrait of all 12, most of them images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Said Balick, "These planetary nebulae asked to be remembered."

A more emotional memory of Terzian came during a talk by Kiriaki Xilouris, a researcher at the Arecibo Observatory. The two, she recalled, met in 1991 "under terrible conditions, even tragedy." She was working at the time for the University of Crete and was mainly responsible for the institution's optical observatory.

"In graduate school one of my fellow students actually killed my professor," Xilouris said, her voice breaking. She said she felt unable to go on at the time, but Terzian contacted her and went to Crete. "I was in shock but Yervant told me that no matter what, in life tragedies will always happen, but the show has to go on. That was my biggest lesson from Professor Terzian."

There were many other tributes as the day proceeded. Steven Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, operator of the Hubble telescope, recalled joining the Cornell astronomy department as a professor almost 20 years ago. "Almost everything in my career has been under Yervant's tutelage," he noted.

Beckwith went on to describe the next generation of space telescope that will follow the Hubble when it "de-orbits" in about 2010. Code-named NGST, for next generation space telescope, the new instrument will have a primary mirror about three times the diameter of the Hubble's yet will cost only about $2 billion, about half the amount of the Hubble's lifetime cost.

The NGST, he said, will be designed to seek out two major areas of astronomy: the origin and evolution of galaxies and the question of planets beyond the solar system. "If we get lucky, we may be able to separate images of Jupiter-like planets from their stars in nearby systems," he said.

Later, at the banquet, President Hunter Rawlings called Terzian, "One of Cornell's truly great faculty members." He praised him for his commitment to teaching, his intellectual leadership and "his passions for science education in general." He concluded, "Yervant Terzian is a citizen of the world, he is a scientist, he is an ethical person whom all of us are better for having met."

Of the day's many reminiscences, none was more poig-nant than that offered by Bruce Lewenstein, associate professor of science communication. He recalled returning by bus with Terzian from a legislative trip to Albany: "I asked him, 'When did you know that you wanted to be an astronomer?' In the darkness of the bus his mind drifted back. He was 7, he said, a little boy in Egypt, and he looked up at the stars and he wondered about them."