IfA is Turning 50 : July 1, 2017!

The UH Institute for Astronomy celebrated its 50th Anniversary with a special three-day meeting in Honolulu from June 28-30, 2017. Everyone with a history or relationship with the IfA was invited to attend, including former and present graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty.

Brochure
We put together a brochure based on interviews with various members of the IfA community.
The more-complete online version may be seen here.

Program
We will be highlighting many of the great achievements of the IfA. The full program is online at https://about.ifa.hawaii.edu/ifa50/meeting-program

The first day, held at our Manoa headquarters, includes talks by dignitaries and a panel of IfA Directors, and is free. The remainder of the event will be held at the beautiful Ko’olau Ballroom. Registration for the extended event is now closed.

Please contribute to the program!
We want everyone to come with a memory or two to share.  It could be an anecdote or travail.
Let us know if you need to show a slide or two, if you have a sentence or two or several paragraphs.

You can make a contribution at https://about.ifa.hawaii.edu/ifa50/your-stories

We would also request that you send us any questions you would like to pose to our panel of Directors and Acting Directors.

Transportation
We are providing some limited transportation by bus.  See the bus schedule at https://about.ifa.hawaii.edu/ifa50/transportation-schedule/

We look forward to seeing you all this summer!

Rolf Kudritzki
Chair of the IFA 50th Anniversary Committee


Congratulation to the 50th Anniversary of the foundation of IfA, sent from Bonn, Germany, where I, Keiichi KODAIRA, former Director of NAOJ (1994-2000), am serving as Director of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) since 2008. It was great days for me to cooperate with IfA to promote the JNLT (later SUBARU Telescope) project, and am very happy to witness further fruitful collaboration between IfA and NAOJ. I am very much grateful to the IfA staff members all through its history for their friendly and generous help for our operation at the Mauna Kea Observatory.  IfA has brought up UH to one of the top scientific spots in the world in astronomy along with high achievements in other fields.

In 1980s Nancy and Don helped me to get familiar with MKO. One night when I was carrying out IR observation at UH2.2m telescope, Nancy guided Prof. Matsuda up to me in the dome, in the effort further to persuade him for collaboration with Japan. All through from my first visit to IfA in 1982 up to my last years of NAOJ, I am keeping warmest memories of IfA, wishing IfA further wonderful advancement !

Keiichi Kodaira 28.06.2017, Bonn