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UH Astronomy
Institute gets
new chief

Rolf-Peter Kudritzki of the
University of Munich is approved
today by the UH Board of Regents
as the institute's first permanent
director in three years

Three new Mauna Kea telescopes OK'd

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

A University of Munich astronomer and observatory director, highly regarded in the international astronomical community, today was appointed to lead the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. The UH Board of Regents, meeting in Hilo, approved Rolf-Peter Kudritzki's appointment with an annual salary of $215,000.

Excluding coaches, he would be the highest paid UH faculty member after Dr. Edwin Cadman, dean of the medical school, who earns $330,000 in state funds and $100,000 from hospitals.

The last permanent astronomy director, Donald N.B. Hall, was paid about $131,796.

UH President Kenneth P. Mortimer said Kudritzki, who will assume his position in October, "will bring enormous experience and capability to the university and to the state of Hawaii."

Kudritzki is professor of astronomy and director of the astronomy and astrophysics observatory at the University of Munich. He also has been dean of the physics faculty since last summer. He has been a scientific member at the Max-Planck-Institut for Astrophysik in Garching, Germany, since 1990.

Klaus Keil, director of the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, who headed the search committee, said Kudritzki was "head and shoulders ahead" of other candidates in the view of the committee, astronomy faculty and others asked for input.

"We are looking forward to having a very strong, dedicated and also sensitive leader here who understands Hawaii, even though he is a foreigner, who showed a great deal of foresight into Hawaii, the difficulty of problems and also the wonderful things he can do here."

Robert McLaren has been interim director since June 1997, when he succeeded Hall. He has held the post without an associate director and while continuing his previous role in charge of the Mauna Kea observatory complex.

"For a variety of reasons, I basically took it all on myself," McLaren said. "We always seemed to be six months away from having a new director. It didn't seem like a good time to make big changes." He has four months of accumulated vacation and plans to celebrate his 10th anniversary with the institute in August by taking some time off.

Respected and well-liked by his colleagues, McLaren has guided the institute through a rocky three years marked by controversies and instability. McLaren said the new director faces many management challenges because of diverse operations on three islands, the institute in Manoa and observatories on Mauna Kea and Haleakala.

"One of the challenges will be to develop programs so that each of those sites can be somewhat independent and autonomous, and yet at the same time have an integrated, cohesive institute," McLaren said.

Two search committees looked for candidates who could handle the sweeping responsibilities and deal with controversial issues, such as the Mauna Kea master plan.

Kudritzki was one of two finalists interviewed in recent months and is a popular choice among astronomy faculty members. He has a distinguished background in research and administration, participating in many international collaborations. He was elected this year as a director of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, which manages U.S. national observatories. Kudritzki's research recently has focused on hot massive stars, and he has been involved in telescope and instrument development.

McLaren said it's up to the new director, but he probably will return to what he was doing before overseeing Mauna Kea.

McLaren feels the Mauna Kea master plan suffered from a lack of attention to some extent because of his interim directorship.

"I think the plan is not as well defined as it might have been. On the other hand, it contains all the elements it needs to do a good job." The first steps toward implementing it will be to set up a management office at UH-Hilo, get a good director and appoint an advisory board, McLaren said.

"I'm hoping that we'll have a period of five years or so of relative quiet where we can work on some of these community relations issues that have been neglected in the past."

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Ka Leo O Hawaii
University of Hawaii