Obituaries : Leo Goldberg, Noted Astronomer

Leo Goldberg, director emeritus of the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson and one of the nation’s better-known astronomers, died of cancer Sunday at Tucson Medical Center.

He was 74 and had lived in Tucson since retiring from the observatory in 1977.

He went to the Arizona facility from the University of Michigan, where he was director of its observatory from 1948 to 1960, and from Harvard University, where he was chairman of the astronomy department and director of its observatory from 1966 to 1971.

Goldberg, who earned three degrees, including his doctorate from Harvard, was a past president of the American Astronomical Society and the International Astronomical Union.

His scientific pursuits ranged from the study of mass loss from cool stars to a history of space astronomy. He became, in 1985, the first person to win the Martin-Marietta Chair of Space History at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution and in 1973 won the Distinguished Service Medal of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.