He called the sun a great musical instrument.

Using around-the-clock daylight in the Antarctic summer to make relatively impossible high altitude solar studies, he gathered data confirming that our very sun oscillates every five minutes, rather like a bell.  Once a Syracuse journalism student, he changed his major to science after taking a "physics for poets" class.  He passed away last month at age 91, leaving behind a research facility at the South Pole. 

Following are a few favorite lines of mine, fellow blogmates, in celebration of a life that fostered inquiry: astronomy in Antarctica.  

Wishing heaven's endless embrace upon the dear soul of astrophysicist Dr. Martin Pomerantz.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Cloths of Heaven

William Butler Yeats