Edward Robert Harrison - Life

Life

Harrison's education at Sir John Cass Technical Institute was interrupted by World War II (WWII), during which he served for six years with the British Army in various military campaigns, eventually serving as Radar Adviser to the Northern Area of the (British) Egyptian Army.

Following World War II, Harrison became a British civil servant, first with the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Harwell, and later at the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory. During this time he attained the equivalent of university degrees, becoming a graduate, then an Associate, and finally a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He also became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In 1965 Ted Harrison went to the USA as a NAS-NRC Senior Research Associate at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in Maryland. In 1966 he became one of the three founders of the Astronomy Program within the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Over the next 30 years he influenced the revival of the Five College Astronomy Department, linking UMass to Amherst College, Hampshire College, Smith College, and Mount Holyoke College. He also played a key role in the rise to international prominence of the Five College graduate course in astronomy. At his death, he was emeritus Distinguished University Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UMass, and an adjunct professor at the Steward Observatory of the University of Arizona.