200 Scientists Transfer To Perkin Laboratory

In February about 200 astrophysicists and staff personnel from Harvard and the Smithsonian Institution will start moving out of leased North Cambridge offices into the Richard S. Perkin Laboratory.

Perkin Lab is a $4.6 million-dollar pre-cast concrete addition to the Harvard College Observatory.

"We need this additional space very badly," Alexander Dalgarno, acting director of the Observatory, said yesterday. "More than that, we have long been inconvenienced by having some of our research teams working in town away from our main offices on Observatory Hill," he said.

"The idea of this new structure is to bring our researches together in one spot and perhaps cut long-run costs at the same time by no longer having to rent Cambridge buildings," Dalgarno added.

The addition will house three kinds of laboratories and an astronomical library, as well as offices, in the basement the engineering lab will refine and execute researchers designs for special experimental gadgetry. The photo division of the laboratories will be "a sophisticated dark room for astronomers," Robert G. Reed, an Observatory officer, said yesterday.

In the shock-tube laboratory, shock waves which are passed through gases at high temperatures will yield data about the gases physical properties.

The second story of the addition will provide larger quarters for the Observatory's research library, now housed in the old main building.

The Move

"The time needed for moving these books and especially all the complex laboratory equipment will mean that full occupancy of the new addition will not come about until June," Robert Burbank, the project supervisor, said yesterday.

Burback said he was pleased with the design of the addition. "The use of pre-molded concrete instead of steel has cut our on-site labor costs and our time of completion by about two months," he said.