| Admin_History | Fr Patrick Treanor was educated at St Ignatius', Stamford Hill. He was interested in making wireless sets, telescopes, and other devices out of spare parts. From 1943 to 1949 he was at Campion Hall, where in 1956 he was elected to a Skynner Senior Studentship at Balliol College in Astronomy and Physics and obtained a DPhil in Astronomy, before entering Theology in 1949. By this time he was a member of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society and coeditor of its journal, 'The Observatory'. In 1952 he was awarded the Johnson Memorial Prize at Oxford for his essay on 'The development of a new interference technique for solar research and its application to solar wavelength and intensity measurements'. He continued his astronomical work at Oxford from 1953-1958, being awarded the Henry Skynner Junior Fellowship at Balliol. During his time in Oxford, he was also the Spiritual Father at Campion Hall. He then spent six months resting at Wimbledon before research at the observatories of Lick and Yerkes in the US. In 1961 he went to the Vatican Observatory, and in September 1970, he became its Director. He was Secretary of the Site Preservation and Identification Group of the International Astronomical Union. He also spent time searching for a new site for the Observatory, and designed a large sundial for an extension to the Vatican Palace galleries in Rome. He died 18 February 1978 in Rome. |