of Michigan faculty and staff portrait
collection
ACTING DIRECTOR 1929-30 AND 1942-45
Will Carl Rufus was born in Chatham, Ontario, Canada July 1, 1876. He earned degrees in 1902 and 1908 from Albion College and became a high school mathematics teacher in Flint and Lansing, then a Methodist Episcopal pastor for two years. He traveled to Korea to teach mathematics and astronomy before attending the University of Michigan to earn his doctorate in Astronomy in 1915. After two years in Korea as a Professor of Astronomy, Rufus returned to the University of Michigan to teach in 1917. He served as Acting Director of the Observatory when Ralph Curtiss suddenly died in 1929, and he returned to the faculty upon the appointment of Heber Curtis as Director. Following the death of Heber Curtis, Rufus again became the Acting Director until his retirement in 1945. Rufus completely integrated the McMath-Hulbert Observatory at Lake Angeles with the Astronomy Department. He also developed one of the first lectures about the history of astronomy in America, and he wrote the first history of Michigan’s Astronomy Department. Rufus died at the age of seventy on September 21, 1946 at his home at Crooked Lake near Ann Arbor.
