Abstract:
The Armagh-Dunsink-Harvard (ADH) Telescope and the concomitant involvement by Armagh and Dunsink Observatories in the Harvard Southern Station at Boyden were two of Eric Lindsay's principal contributions to astronomy. Through his close friendship with Harlow Shapley and Bart Bok, Lindsay pushed their dream of a large southern Schmidt to complement the Palomar Schmidt then under construction. With the prestigious involvement of Harvard University and backing by Éamon de Valera, the Taoiseach in Dublin, he was able to persuade the two Irish Governments to support this joint project. Sadly, the post-war financial climate imposed constraints on the mounting and housing of the telescope that seriously hampered its operation from the beginning, and it was left to its successors at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), in Chile, and at Siding Spring Observatory, in Australia, to complete a full southern sky survey. Nevertheless, with new data reduction techniques developed in the late 1960s, a number of the technical problems of the ADH were overcome and the telescope made several significant contributions to southern hemisphere astronomy.

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