Joseph M. Chamberlain presided over two of the world’s great planetariums, in New York and Chicago, before retiring to his native Peoria in 1991 after 23 years at the Adler Planetarium.
Dr. Chamberlain, 88, died Monday, Nov. 28, in a Peoria nursing home, according to Adler officials. A cause of death was not given.
“He was a very knowledgeable astronomer,” said Paul Knappenberger, who replaced Dr. Chamberlain as president at the Adler. “He went on to become a leader in the American museum community, a longtime board member of the American Association of Museums, where he served a term as president (1974-1975).”
Dr. Chamberlain also held leadership positions in the International Planetarium Society and the International Planetarium Directors Congress.
Dr. Chamberlain attended the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, N.Y., during World War II. As a midshipman he was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean. After graduating in 1944, he served in the Navy’s Pacific fleet as a navigator.
After the war, Dr. Chamberlain received a bachelor’s degree from Bradley University in Peoria, then a master’s and a doctorate in education from Columbia University in New York.
Dr. Chamberlain returned to the Merchant Marine Academy and taught astronomy, meteorology and celestial navigation for five years. He left the academy for New York after being hired by the American Museum of Natural History to take over the Hayden Planetarium.
In 1968, one of the first acts of a new board of trustees at the Adler was to hire Dr. Chamberlain to run the institution.
The Adler was the first planetarium in the U.S. when it opened in 1930 and the most technologically advanced such institution in the world. By 1967, run by the Chicago Park District, it had become outdated and lacking in leadership.
Mayor Richard J. Daley convened a civic panel to retool the institution and agreed to its recommendation to remake the Adler as a nonprofit museum with its own board.
After being hired by the board, Dr. Chamberlain immediately began replacing out-of-date technology and adding astronomers, curators, educators and professional museum administrators. Over the next 20 years, he vastly increased space with underground additions, adding new theaters and exhibit spaces.
In 1977 he oversaw the installation of the Adler’s Doane Observatory, with a 20-inch reflecting telescope that allowed the public to do direct viewing of the heavens.
“There is nothing more beautiful than nature in the raw,” Dr. Chamberlain told the Tribune in 1980, talking about the Doane. “Now we can get a pretty good picture right here on Lake Michigan.”
When he retired in 1991, Dr. Chamberlain volunteered to stay an extra month to show the ropes to his replacement, Knappenberger.
“He had a great sense of humor,” Knappenberger said. “He was very, very helpful to me when I came on board.”
Dr. Chamberlain is survived by his wife, Paula; three daughters, Janet Flinchbaugh, Susan Cardwell and Barbara Vetterick; a brother, Thad; a sister, Barbara; and four grandchildren.
Services will be private.
