David LayzerDavid Layzer was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on December 31, 1925. Both his parents immigrated from Poland after WWI and met in the US. His father, a doctor, introduced him to the director of the Warner-Swasey Observatory in Cleveland, who encouraged Daid to apply to Harvard. David applied, was accepted and enrolled in 1943. After three semesters, he was drafted into the army in support of the war effort and spent two years in the Signal Corps. He then returned to Harvard and graduated in 1947 with a degree in mathematics. He enrolled in the graduate program in astronomy at Harvard and received a PhD degree in 1950, having written his thesis under Donald Menzel on theoretical calculations of atomic spectra. After postdoctoral positions at Michigan, Berkeley and Princeton he joined the faculty of the Astronomy Department at Harvard in 1953. He was tenured in 1959, and appointed the first Donald H. Menzel Chair of Astrophysics in 1979, a position he held until his retirement in 1997 at age 73. Read More Read Less