Leonard Searle *56

Searle was born in England, and in 1952 he received a bachelor’s degree from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In 1956, he received a Ph.D. from Princeton in astrophysical sciences. He then went on to the University of Toronto, Caltech, and the faculty of the Mount Strambo Observatory in Australia, before joining the Carnegie Observatories in 1968. He remained there for the duration of his career.

The Carnegie Observatories provided essential information for determining the conditions of the Big Bang that created the universe. Searle also was crucial to the construction of the twin Magellan telescopes at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, which opened in 2000, and are generally considered the best natural-imaging telescopes in the world.

Searle may be best known for his work with Robert Zinn (now at Yale) on how galaxies are formed. By studying small galaxies near the outer fringes of the Milky Way, the two concluded that galaxies grew by swallowing smaller galaxies (contradicting prior theories). This is now the accepted view.

Searle’s wife of 47 years, Eleanor, died in 1997. There are no immediate survivors.