The collection includes portraits and an informal photo of Rossiter and his wife as well as photos relating to Rossiter's interest in the Lamont-Hussey Observatory.
Richard Alfred Rossiter was born in Oswego, N.Y. on December 19, 1886. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1914 with Bachelor of Arts, he taught mathematics at Wesleyan Seminary in Genesee, N.Y. until 1919. While teaching at Wesleyan Seminary, Rossiter married Jennie (sometimes spelled Jannie) B. Van Dusen, in 1915. Rossiter then attended the University of Michigan, where he received his M.A. (1920) and Ph.D. in Astronomy (1923). During his Ph.D. research, Rossiter provided evidence for the existence of a phenomenon that occurs when a secondary star or another planet moves across the face of the primary or parent star.
Rossiter observed the effect for his dissertation, which was published in 1924. Rossiter combined his research with a series of earlier measurements, and described it in the dissertation. Dean Benjamin McLaughlin was another University of Michigan student who observed and published his work about the effect in 1924. The phenomenon was named the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, after Richard Rossiter and Benjamin McLaughlin.
After graduating from the University of Michigan, Rossiter began teaching at the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy. In 1926, Rossiter—who had by then achieved the rank of associate professor--traveled to South Africa to lead what later would become the university's Lamont-Hussey Observatory in Bloemfontein (South Africa). He helped establish the observatory and, upon its completion in 1928, began surveying alongside his colleagues. Over the course of his tenure, Rossiter would go on to discover more then 5,000 new double star pairs. He worked at the Lamont-Hussey Observatory until his retirement in 1952, at which point the University of Michigan's Board of Regents named him Associate Professor Emeritus of Astronomy.
Rossiter was a member of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa and would go on to serve as its president in 1940. He also wrote several publications, including The Orbit and Rotation of the Brighter Component of Beta Lyrae (1933), New southern double stars found at the Lamont-Hussey observatory of the University of Michigan, Bloemfontein, South Africa, and Catalogue of Southern Double Stars (1955).
Richard Alfred Rossiter passed away in Bloemfontein on January 26, 1977.
