William Hammond Wright
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William Hammond Wright (born November 4, 1871 in San Francisco , † May 16, 1959 in San José ) was an American astronomer .
Life
After graduating with a bachelor's degree from the University of California in 1893 and stays at the University of Chicago and University of California, he became an assistant astronomer at the Lick Observatory in 1897 . From 1903 to 1906 he built a southern station of the observatory at Cerro San Cristobal near Santiago de Chile , equipped with a reflecting telescope with a primary mirror diameter of 93 cm. In just 9 months he began observing this new observatory, from which he obtained many radial velocity measurements of southern stars . In 1908 he was promoted to astronomer. From 1918 to 1919 he worked at the test site in Aberdeen, Maryland for the ammunition division of the United States Army . He then returned to the Lick Observatory where he worked until his retirement and was its director from 1935 to 1942.
Wright is known for his determination of radial velocities of stars in our Milky Way galaxy , and for his work with a spectrograph he designed himself . He obtained spectra of novae and gas nebulae in which he determined the wavelengths and intensities of previously unknown spectral lines. In 1924 he deduced a thickness of 100 km for the Martian atmosphere from photographs taken at different wavelengths . A project to use positions of distant galaxies in a photographic survey as a reference for the positions and proper movements of stars never came to a close.
Honors
- 1922 member of the National Academy of Sciences
- 1928 Henry Draper Medal
- 1935 member of the American Philosophical Society
- 1938 Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society
The asteroid (1747) Wright , the lunar crater Wright and a Martian crater are named after him.
Web links
- Publications by WH Wright in the Astrophysics Data System
- PW Merrill: William Hammond Wright, 1871-1959. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Vol. 71 (1959), No. 421, p. 305. (Obituary, English)
- obituary
Individual evidence
- ^ Member History: William H. Wright. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 18, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Wright, William Hammond |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American astronomer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 4, 1871 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | San Francisco |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 16, 1959 |
| Place of death | San Jose |