William Harkness

William Harkness (born December 17, 1837 in Ecclefechan , Scotland , † February 28, 1903 in Jersey City , New Jersey ) was an American astronomer and naval officer.

Life

Harkness, whose family immigrated from Scotland in 1839 (his father was a pastor and doctor), studied from 1854 at Lafayette College and at the University of Rochester with a bachelor's degree in 1858. He was then a court reporter before joining the New York Homeopathic Medical College medicine studied with the degree (MD) in 1862. At times he was a military surgeon in the Civil War in the Northern Army and involved in several major battles. From 1862 to 1865 he was astronomical assistant at the United States Naval Observatory (from 1863 also a mathematics professor in the US Navy), served on the USS Monadnock monitor in 1865/66 (studying geomagnetism and the effect of armor on the compass) and then was with the Hydrographic Service of the US Coast Survey in Washington, DC From 1867 he was at the US Naval Observatory. He was involved in observing the transit of Venus in Tasmania in 1874 and in Washington, DC in 1882. From 1894 to 1899 he was astronomical director of the US Naval Observatory and from 1897 to 1899 director of the Nautical Almanac . In 1899 he retired as Rear Admiral.

He is known for the development of astronomical instruments (such as telescopes, a spherometer caliper , photographic recording of the solar spectrum during solar eclipses). In 1879 he developed a theory of the focus curve of achromatic telescopes. From his photographic observations of the passage of Venus, he was able to determine values of the solar distance (solar parallax). He was involved in planning both expeditions for the transits in 1874 and 1882 and developed the astronomical instruments for them. He clashed with the astronomers Edward Pickering and Simon Newcomb about the reliability of the photographic method (in 1874 he used wet plate photography) to determine the distance to the sun. He was successful in this, so that during the next transit in 1882, German and French astronomers also used photography (this time a dry plate process). He determined the solar parallax to be 8.842 "and later 8.809".

While observing the solar eclipse in 1869, he discovered the spectral line K 1474 in the solar corona.

In 1893 he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science . In 1898 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

Fonts

On the relative accuracy of different methods of determining the solar parallax, American Journal of Science, Series 3, Volume 33, 1881, pp. 375-394
The Solar Parallax and its Related Constants, Observations made during the year 1885 at the US Naval Observatory, Volume 3, 1891, pp. 1–169 ( digitized version )

literature

Thomas Hockey (Ed.), The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomiers, Springer 2009, pp. 470f
SJ Dick, W. Orchiston, T. Love: Simon Newcomb, William Harkness and the Nineteenth-century American Transit of Venus Expeditions. Journal for the History of Astronomy, Vol. Xxix (1998), p. 221 ( digitized version )

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Member History: William Harkness. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 21, 2018 .

personal data
SURNAME	Harkness, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH	December 17, 1837
PLACE OF BIRTH	Ecclefechan , Scotland
DATE OF DEATH	February 28, 1903
Place of death	Jersey City , New Jersey

[1] Member History: William Harkness. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 21, 2018 .