The Adaptive Optics Revolution: A History (review)

It is clarity that characterizes both the focus of Robert W. Duffner's topic as well as his presentation. Making a comparison of the resolution of ground-based telescope astronomy to the blurry images one sees when looking through a foggy shower glass, Duffner marks the introduction of adaptive optics as a revolutionary moment in astronomy—one in which clarity could be pursued at only yet imagined resolution. His history, too, adds clarity to the existing history of astronomy, particularly in terms of the history of government and military involvement in scientific discovery and development. An Air Force historian, Duffner utilized extensive interviews and archival research to build a narrative detailing the contributions made to the development of adaptive optics by the Air Force and other organizations within the Department of Defense (DoD).

Adaptive optics allows astronomers to obtain clarity despite the distorting effects of the atmosphere. It is the atmosphere of the cold war that Duffner attempts to seek clarity within—as do many historians of late-twentieth-century science—and he does so with great success. While adaptive optics was born as a theoretical idea in 1953, it was the demands of the cold war—specifically the interest in obtaining images of Soviet satellites—that prompted the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the U.S. Air Force to implement the first practical system. Duffner's history does not attempt to document wholly the importance of private sector astronomers in the development of adaptive optics, instead focusing on the role of military research and funding.

Duffner's history begins in the immediate post-Sputnik era with government and military interest in reconnaissance and surveillance of space-based activities, but places the particular importance of adaptive optics as emerging after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 when faster, clearer systems of surveying activities in space (as well as more precise methods of antisatellite defense measures) became a matter of national security and public demand. Beginning in the mid1960s, DARPA (then, ARPA) began funding various research projects in adaptive optics, the most prominent being those of the U.S. Air Force laboratory system that Duffner centers his narrative on. With President Reagan's establishment of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and its reliance on precise methods of surveillance, research in adaptive optics secured federal funding. The U.S. Air Force research programs, classified until the 1990s, as a result were amply funded and, as Duffner maintains, were almost uniquely capable of attracting qualified military and civilian scientists for research in this area.

Duffner places particular importance on the role that laser research had on adaptive optics, both in terms of scientific advancement as well as military interest in providing funding for defense-related research. The concept of a laser guide star, developed in the early 1980s, offered the impetus for DARPA to supply additional funding to advance adaptive optics. Duffner offers other examples of adaptive optics research program focusing on laser technology, SDI and the Air Force's Airborne Laser project to name a few, though he does not fail to mention the DoD's interest in ground-based telescopes in surveillance systems. These projects had the result of increasing understanding of atmospheric turbulence, creating new avenues for future research, offering clues for removing the effects of this distortion, and eventually application to the Air Force's defense strategies. Duffner outlines these projects, then introduces the reader to the efforts made in the early 1990s to declassify the work being done on adaptive optics by the military, mainly after the retirement of SDI as a national defense strategy. This declassification, presented by Duffner as enacted through seminal conference presentations and the subsequent publication of a special edition of the Journal of the Optical Society of America, opened the field to civilian researchers as well as securing credit for those scientists previously engaged in classified work. Defense-related research was not wholly...