Edward Charles Pickering

Edward Charles Pickering (born July 19, 1846 in Boston , † February 3, 1919 in Cambridge , Massachusetts ) was an American astronomer and physicist, brother of William Henry Pickering .

Together with Hermann Karl Vogel , Pickering discovered the first double stars that could only be identified spectroscopically. He wrote Elements of Physical Manipulations (2 vol., 1873–1876) and developed the Pickering break method named after him , a method for determining the brightness of stars with the naked eye. In 1867 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences , 1873 to the National Academy of Sciences , 1907 to the Royal Society and the Académie des sciences , 1908 to the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg and 1916 to the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

His work mainly concerned star photometry. In 1884 he published "Harvard Photometry" and in 1903 the first photographic star atlas.

In 1897, in the light of the star ζ-Puppis, he found spectral lines of the He ⁺ spectrum, the Pickering series named after him .

He was director of the Harvard College Observatory . The Henry Draper catalog began to be published under his supervision in 1918 .

He employed many women at the Harvard Observatory, including Annie Jump Cannon , Williamina Fleming , Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and Antonia Maury . These women, known to scientists as "Pickering's Harem", made many important astronomical discoveries.

The Pickering crater on the moon is named after him and his brother William Henry Pickering , as is the asteroid (784) Pickeringia .

The Mars crater Pickering is named after the brothers and the New Zealand rocket engineer William Hayward Pickering (1910-2004).

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personal data
SURNAME	Pickering, Edward Charles
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American astronomer and physicist
DATE OF BIRTH	July 19, 1846
PLACE OF BIRTH	Boston , USA
DATE OF DEATH	February 3, 1919
Place of death	Cambridge , Massachusetts, USA