Robert Raynolds McMath

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Robert Raynolds McMath (1891 - 1962) was a U.S. solar astronomer.

McMath's father, Francis C. McMath, was a businessman and keen amateur astronomer who, in 1922, embarked with his son on an ambitious programme of observatory development.

In 1932, Robert extended the functionality of the spectroheliograph so that it could record motion pictures, the spectroheliokinematograph. In the mid-to-late 1930s, as Director of the McMath-Hulbert Observatory at the University of Michigan, he took astonishing moving pictures of solar storms, showing features on the sun's surface that lasted from seconds to days.