In 1890, astronomy was the enterprise of a scattered coalition of amateur and professional scientists working on a roughly equal basis. Both camps conducted essential observations, innovated with new technology, published important papers, attended conferences, joined scientific organisations and received awards of merit.
But as that crucial decade progressed, distinctions between the two groups rapidly began to widen — in terms of academic credentials, mathematical acumen, and, most devastating to the amateurs, the scientific value of their work. Disruptive new technologies — photography and spectroscopy — were fast overtaking traditional visual observation. Productivity imperatives, and the escalating cost of leading-edge equipment, increasingly displaced gentlemens’ private observatories in favour of externally funded institutions with professional staffs. By the decade’s end, amateur researchers found themselves effectively sidelined by their institutional brethren.
Then…
