Three successive RASC Windsor Centre presidents (left to right): Cyril Hallam, Dan Bautenheimer, Charlie Bell discuss plans for a meeting in 1950. (Lorne Rogers and Cameron Montrose were also in the original photo.)

This man, with the Mephistophelian/Orson Wellsian visage, is Ralph E. Williamson, Ph.D. Chicago, a student of Chandrasekhar. Ralph came to UofT/DDO in 1946 or so. He and I had been great friends together at Cornell. At the start of WWII, we found ourselves teaching navigation to US Navy Midshipmen recruits. Then I went to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Ralph stayed on for a bit, working with Charles Seeger onthe Cornell radio astronomy project (now Aricebo) that Charles initiated.

This is Wiliam (Bill) Hossack. Bill got a Ph.D. at DDO designing and building an oscilloscopic spectrophotometer for analysing the spectral plates taken with the 74-inch. He went on to take a position with the Department of Defence in Ottawa. On July 10, 1961 he and his wife and small son were returning from Montréal on the infamous old highway between Montreal and Ottawa. Their car collided head on with another and both Bill and his wife were killed, though the boy survived. A real tragedy. Both were accomplished musicians.

This may be J. Beverley Oke as a student, before he went to Princeton for his Ph.D., after which he came back to the staff of the Department of Astronomy. He left (1955?) to go to Cal Tech. He lives in Victoria now and if you were to ask him if it is he I am sure he would reply. His address is DAO, etc. A better photocopy of his face would have helped me perhaps.

Photo by R. Northcott, Nov. 1950. Note by D.A. MacRae, 1998.