Edward A. Halbach

Born April 5, 1909, in Canby, Minnesota, he came to Milwaukee, earned a Marquette engineering degree, taught math and electrical engineering at the college, then worked missile-guidance problems at AC-Delco on the Titan and Apollo programs before landing at Allis-Chalmers on the West Allis factory grounds. There he designed electro-mechanical gear for diesel locomotives. When the electrical division became Siemens-Allis, he stayed. He retired in 1978.

The science that outlived the plant started at 2046 South 59th Street. In 1932 Luverne Armfield invited amateurs into his West Allis backyard; Halbach was in the first wave of what became the Milwaukee Astronomical Society. He directed the society's observatory for thirty-five years, became the first official president of the Astronomical League in 1947, and logged more than 98,000 variable-star observations for the AAVSO. In 1946 he turned down a job at McDonald Observatory. In 1981 he was the first living winner of the League's Leslie C. Peltier Award. Award citations also note that he built office furniture for AAVSO headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

NBC's Today show noted his 100th birthday. He died March 20, 2011, at 101. He was Minnesota-born; West Allis is where the Allis-Chalmers career and the backyard observatory that launched a lifetime of amateur astronomy belong.