By Paul Gottlieb, Kurt's son

"My father, Kurt Gottlieb, was a Czech Jewish Mechanical Engineer who managed to escape from Nazi Europe and arrived in Sydney from Italy on the 28 April 1940. His Czech university engineering qualifications were not recognised at that time in Australia. He beifly attended the Sydney Technical College to get Australian draftsman qualifications. From there, he was recruited as a 'friendly alien' by Richard Woolley, on the basis of his Czech qualifications, to work at Stromlo on the design and manufacture of optical munitions instruments. He worked in the workshop that was converted to a factory during this period and later with the Army Inventions Directorate on advanced instruments." In fact, Kurt was responsible for designing more than 11 different optical instruments during the war period. 

He lived in the bachelor's quarters alongside many other 'friendly aliens' recruited for their skills in optics and engineering. 

After the end of the World War II, Kurt worked with Clabon (Cla) Allen to develop and fit a spectrograph to the 30 inch Reynolds telescope. It was used by Allen to determine stellar photometric gradients (intensity of light) and monochromatic (light wavelength) magnitudes by photoelectric means. The program was a southern extension of the Royal Observatory’s relative gradient program.

On Monday 7 October, Kurt Gottlieb captured the first photograph of Sputnik orbiting 560 miles above the Earth. The manmade satellite launched into space by the then USSR (Russia) was only visible for a short time and was slightly obscured by the light from the Moon. It was impossible to move the larger telescope into place to track the satellite. The satellite was described as a 'sphere 23 inches in diameter and weighing 180 pounds' (The Canberra Times, 8 October 1957). It completed an orbit of the Earth every 95 minutes. The news of this satellite caused a furore, which prompted Bart Bok, then Director of Mount Stromlo Observatory, to address both houses of parliament.