The quest started with a single, black-and-white photograph. A massive telescope dominates the frame. In May 1921, when the image was captured, the 54-foot-long, 1,200-pound refracting telescope at the University of Chicago’s Lake Geneva Yerkes Observatory was the largest of its type in the world, capable of revealing unseen corners of the universe. Beneath this behemoth is a crowd of scientists. One, with a shock of wild gray hair, stands out. Nearly a century later, a group of researchers at the University of Chicago evaluating the photograph (below) recognized that…
