Bio
Bob Antol attended Iowa State University majoring in Mathematics graduating in 1978. He was Iowa State’s first recipient of the Richard V. Andree award for his paper entitled “The Perfect Numbers and Pascal’s Triangle”. After graduating from Iowa State in 1978, Bob started working for IBM in East Fishkill, New York. He worked in the Electronic Design Automation organization as a Senior Software Engineer. Bob retired from IBM after 35 years.
In 1985, Bob was on an expedition to the North Pole. Bob has stood on top of the world! In 2005, Bob and his wife built an addition onto their house; incorporated onto the corner of the addition is a 2 story octagonal tower with a 16-foot Ash dome observatory. It took four months from groundbreaking to achieving first light. The observatory is known as “Stargate 4173 at Grimaldi Tower”. Bob wrote about this (from design to construction to first light) for the book entitled “My Heavens!: The Adventures of a Lonely Stargazer Building an Over-the-Top Observatory (Patrick Moore’s Practical Astronomy Series)” by Gordon Rogers (refer to Chapter Eleven). In September 2015, a couple of Bob’s Hydrogen-alpha images of the Sun were featured in a Sky and Telescope Magazine article. Bob and his observatory were featured in Iowa State’s “VISIONS Across America”. The image from this project is on display in Carver Hall’s Sprague Room.
In October 2016, Bob received the Distinguished Alumni Award in the Department of Mathematics from the University.