I met Westphal some years later when he hired me to work with the WF/PC team. Jim was a storyteller, and the time he got the spies worried was a story he loved to retell. It said a lot about who he was.
Jim reveled in the very idea of physics. You can’t hide physics, and you certainly can’t hide from it. In a debate between physics and politics, physics wins. Every single time. I think it confused him that anyone could ever forget such an obvious and fundamental fact. But he knew it when they did! The man could smell manure a mile away.
Whether sitting at a telescope or lowering a camera into Old Faithful (yes, really), Westphal took an almost childlike joy in the world. His highest praise was to call something “really neat.” He heralded good news by exclaiming, “Science and engineering triumphing over ignorance and superstition!” That enthusiasm was contagious.
I recall a night in Hawaii when he led the entire WF/PC science team out onto recently cooled lava — “Look at the red glow coming from the crack under your feet!” — to watch molten rock pour into the ocean. He knew it was against the rules, but since the rangers left at sundown, he also knew that no one would stop us.
Ask Westphal for advice, and nine times out of 10 he would say, “If you aren’t having fun, you aren’t doing it right!” Jim didn’t care much about hierarchy. He did care about competence, and he earned the fierce devotion of the people who worked with and for him. I recall someone asking him how he assembled such a talented group and coaxed them into doing such remarkable things. Managers could learn a lot from his answer: “You find really clever people. You provide them with resources. You protect them from nonsense. And then you get the hell out of their way!”
I owe Jim Westphal my career. More than that, I owe him my understanding of what intellectual integrity looks like.
Jim didn’t live to see Hubble’s 25th anniversary. He died in September 2004. I don’t know that I heard his name mentioned during any of last year’s official Hubble commemorations.
But those of us who were there know that he is a huge part of Hubble’s soul.
Jeff Hester is a keynote speaker, coach, and astrophysicist. Follow his thoughts at
jeff-hester.com