page_title: Robert F. Christy
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Robert F. Christy / Later life
caption_attribution_description: English: This Hubble image shows RS Puppis, a type of variable star known as a Cepheid variable. As variable stars go, Cepheids have comparatively long periods— RS Puppis, for example, varies in brightness by almost a factor of five every 40 or so days. RS Puppis is unusual; this variable star is shrouded by thick, dark clouds of dust enabling a phenomenon known as a light echo to be shown with stunning clarity. These Hubble observations show the ethereal object embedded in its dusty environment, set against a dark sky filled with background galaxies.
context_page_description: Robert Frederick Christy was a Canadian-American theoretical physicist and later astrophysicist who was one of the last surviving people to have worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. He briefly served as acting president of California Institute of Technology.
  A graduate of the University of British Columbia in the 1930s where he studied physics, he followed George Volkoff, who was a year ahead of him, to the University of California, Berkeley, where he was accepted as a graduate student by Robert Oppenheimer, the leading theoretical physicist in the United States at that time. Christy received his doctorate in 1941 and joined the physics department of Illinois Institute of Technology.
  In 1942 he joined the Manhattan Project at the University of Chicago, where he was recruited by Enrico Fermi to join the effort to build the first nuclear reactor, having been recommended as a theory resource by Oppenheimer. When Oppenheimer formed the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in 1943, Christy was one of the early recruits to join the Theory Group.
context_section_description: After the war ended, Christy accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Chicago, at a salary of $5,000 per annum, twice what he had been making before the war. He moved back to Chicago in February 1946, but suitable housing was hard to find in the immediate post-war period, and Christy and his family shared a mansion with Edward Teller and his family.
  Before the war, Oppenheimer had spent part of each year teaching at California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Christy was one of Oppenheimer's Berkeley students who made the trip down to Pasadena, California, each year to continue studying with Oppenheimer. After the war, Oppenheimer decided that with his additional responsibilities he could no longer continue this arrangement. The head of the  W. K. Kellogg Radiation Laboratory   at Caltech, Charles Lauritsen therefore asked Oppenheimer for the name of a theoretical physicist that he would recommend as a replacement. Oppenheimer recommended Christy. Willy Fowler then approached Christy with an offer of a full-time position at Caltech at $5,400 per annum, and Christy accepted. He remained at Caltech for the rest of his academic career. The drawback to working at Caltech was that neither Lauritsen nor Fowler was a theoretical physicist, so a heavy workload fell on Christy. This was recognised by a pay raise to $10,000 per annum in 1954.
  
  Christy joined Oppenheimer, Lauritsen  and  Robert Bacher, who joined the faculty at Caltech in 1949, in Project Vista, a detailed 1951 study on how Western Europe could be defended against the Soviet Union. Christy was distraught at the outcome of the 1954 Oppenheimer security hearing. When he encountered Teller, who had testified against Oppenheimer, at Los Alamos in 1954, Christy publicly refused to shake Teller's hand. "I viewed Oppenheimer as a god", he later recalled, "and I was sure that he was not a treasonable person." Asked about his relationship with Teller in 2006, Christy said:
   I’ve seen him from time to time. Our relationship has remained cool. Since that time, I have disagreed with him in a number of areas. For example, the Strategic Defense Initiative. I have disagreed with him, but I have not argued with him publicly, because Teller operates at a much different level than I do. He’s a confidant of presidents; I’m not. As I say, I merely disagree privately, and that’s the way it is.
  In 1956, Christy was one of a number of scientists from Caltech who publicly called for a ban on atmospheric nuclear testing. The 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that Christy advocated put an end to one of his most unusual projects. He worked with Freeman Dyson on Project Orion, the design of a spacecraft propelled by atomic bombs.
  During a sabbatical year at Princeton University in 1960, Christy began an investigation of Cepheid variables and the smaller RR Lyrae variables, classes of luminous variable stars. At the time it was a mystery as to why they varied. He used the knowledge of the hydrodynamics of implosion gained at Los Alamos during the war to explain this phenomenon. This earned him the Royal Astronomical Society's Eddington Medal for contributions to theoretical astrophysics in 1967.
  Christy was appointed Vice President and Provost of Caltech in 1970. Under Christy and President Harold Brown Caltech expanded its humanities and added economics to allow (or perhaps to compel--undergrads were required to take 25% of their units in "humanities") students to broaden their education. He had David Morrisroe appointed as Vice President for Financial Affairs, and they steered Caltech through the financially stringent 1970s. The first women were admitted as undergraduates in Fall 1970.
  When Jenijoy La Belle, who had been hired in 1969 but refused tenure in 1974, filed suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Christy pressed for the case to be settled and La Belle to be given tenure. The EEOC ruled against Caltech in 1977, adding that she had been paid less than male colleagues. La Belle received tenure in 1979.
  In 1970 he became romantically involved with I
caption: RS Puppis, a Cepheid variable star. Christy explained why they pulsate.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "This Hubble image shows RS Puppis, a type of variable star known as a Cepheid variable. As variable stars go, Cepheids have comparatively long periods \u2014 RS Puppis, for example, varies in brightness by almost a factor of five every 40 or so days. RS Puppis is unusual; this variable star is shrouded by thick, dark clouds of dust enabling a phenomenon known as a light echo to be shown with stunning clarity. These Hubble observations show the ethereal object embedded in its dusty environment, set against a dark sky filled with background galaxies."}