Last look for 'father of NZ astronomy'

95-year old Dr Frank Bateson is finally retiring from stargazing after 80 years. Picture / Alan Gibson

After 80 years of stargazing, Frank Bateson is calling it a day. The visionary has almost lost his sight.

Dubbed in the United States "the father of New Zealand astronomy," the still sprightly 95-year-old is stepping down this month from directorship of the Variable Star Section of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. "It's time I retired," he said matter-of-factly.

Dr Bateson founded the section in 1927 - three years after publishing his first observation of the magnitudes of variable stars while a teenager - and has been the director ever since.

But the voluble raconteur with the sharp memory is not giving up another life-long interest - writing - even if it has to be done by dictation these days. He has just finished a novel and is working on a family history.

Dr Bateson has published hundreds of scientific papers and notes about celestial bodies, as well as books including the autobiographical Paradise Beckons.

His interest in astronomy began as a schoolboy with a small borrowed telescope. What appealed, he said, was "the wonder of it all".

His study of the stars continued during the 17 years he and wife Doris spent in the Cook Islands. Dr Bateson was manager of a large trading company there and the only European member elected to the islands' first legislative assembly.

"I became a politician by saying yes when I should have said no."

In Rarotonga his research on variable stars in the Southern Hemisphere brought international recognition and won him the first of many awards. The dedicated amateur astronomer quickly built up a professional reputation.

"I had purchased a very fine 20m aperture refracting telescope which was housed in a simple observatory erected on the back lawn of our home in Avatiu," he recalled.

Describing himself then, Dr Bateson said: "By profession I was an accountant, by accident a businessman, but by nature an astronomer."

By 1960, several countries were looking south of the Equator for suitable sites on which to establish research observatories and New Zealand was assuming importance among astronomers.

The University of Pennysylvania invited Dr Bateson on a North American lecture tour, appointed him a research associate and sent him on a three-year search for the best location for an observatory here.

That resulted in the choice of the Mt John site near Lake Tekapo in South Canterbury which now boasts the internationally recognised Mt John Observatory of Canterbury University. Dr Bateson was the first astronomer in charge.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Waikato University in 1977 and was also made an OBE.

"I always had a dream that somehow, someday I would provide a professional observatory for young people where they could also study at university," he said.

After 10 years "living and working on many high and lonely mountain tops in the South Island", Dr Bateson left Mt John at 60. He became busier than ever with overseas trips to conferences and lectures.

The old-style gentleman, who insists he has always been "a simple soul", leads a full life despite his blindness. "I'm still physically fit and my brain still works."

Does anything lie beyond the stars he has reached for? "I'm not particularly religious, but I have always believed there is a supreme being."

His aim, said Dr Bateson, was always to give something back and to make life the richer for his passing through it.

"Just accept what you cannot change and, if there is something you can change for the better, make sure you do."

The Royal Astronomical Society will mark Dr Bateson's achievements with a conference and celebration dinner in Tauranga today.