00-inch telescope would not be upstaged by any newly designed creation, especially one by their disgraced former associate. Hale used his position as observatory director to set about ruining Ritchey’s reputation.
Soon, Ritchey realized he would never again work in any capacity in astronomy in the U.S. His ego, his arrogance, and his willful insubordination over the 100-inch had gotten him censured from astronomical work in the country.
A new start
Fortunately, Ritchey had friends in Europe. Five years after leaving Mount Wilson, he sailed for France at the invitation of Chrétien and the Paris Observatory, who were planning a 104-inch telescope. By this time, Chrétien was a professor at the Institut d’Optique and beginning development of the hypergonar lens system, which won him an Academy Award of Merit at the 26th Academy Awards after it was used to create the CinemaScope widescreen film process. (He is the only astronomer to win an Academy Award.)
The French astronomical community anxiously awaited the arrival of the visionary optician and instrument maker. On April 8, 1924 — about a week after his arrival in Paris — Ritchey was awarded the Janssen Medal by the French Academy of Sciences for his work on astronomical instruments. It was an auspicious beginning, but relations soured from there.
The Paris telescope’s benefactor, Assan Farid Dina, thought the design should employ the same paraboloidal primary mirror as its slightly smaller cousin in California, while Chrétien (and others) were eager to design it as the first large Ritchey-Chrétien telescope. Inexplicably, after some deliberation, Ritchey decided on a 5- or 6-meter (197 to 236 inches) telescope, incorporating his newly patented cellular primary mirror design as a Ritchey-Chrétien hyperboloid.
The telescope was never built. Long on vision, ambition, and skill, but short on tact, charisma, and charm, the 59-year-old Ritchey began slowly to break down the welcome extended to him by the French astronomical community. He never bothered to learn French and failed as a project manager and planner, bouncing from one position to the next as his colleagues tried in vain to find a position that suited his incredible talent, but would rein in his budget-sapping ambition and perfectionism.