Walter Sydney Adams
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Lua error in Module:Infobox at line 235: malformed pattern (missing ']'). Walter Sydney Adams (December 20, 1876 – May 11, 1956) was an American astronomer.[1][2][3][4][5][6]
Life and work
Adams was born in Antioch, Turkey to Lucien Harper Adams and Nancy Dorrance Francis Adams, missionary parents,[7] and was brought to the U.S. in 1885[1] He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1898, then continued his education in Chicago and in Germany. After returning to the U.S., he began a career in Astronomy that culminated when he became director of the Mount Wilson Observatory.
His primary interest was the study of stellar spectra. He worked on solar spectroscopy and co-discovered a relationship between the relative intensities of certain spectral lines and the absolute magnitude of a star. He was able to demonstrate that spectra could be used to determine whether a star was a giant or a dwarf. In 1915 he began a study of the companion of Sirius and found that despite a size only slightly larger than the Earth, the surface of the star was brighter per unit area than the Sun and it was about as massive.[8] Such a star later came to be known as a white dwarf. Along with Theodore Dunham, he discovered the strong presence of carbon dioxide in the infrared spectrum of Venus.
Adams died at the age of 79 in Pasadena, California.
Awards and Honors
Awards and honors
- Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1917)[9]
- Henry Draper Medal from the National Academy of Sciences (1918)[10]
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1922[11]
- Valz Prize from the French Academy of Sciences (1923)[12]
- Bruce Medal (1928)[13][14]
- Janssen Medal from the French Academy of Sciences (1934)
- Foreign Member of the Royal Society (ForMemRS) (1950)[1]
- Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1947)
Named after him
- The asteroid 3145 Walter Adams.
- A crater on Mars.
- The crater Adams on the Moon is jointly named after him, John Couch Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams.
References
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<references />, or <references group="..." />Further reading
- Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972, ISBN 0-385-17771-2.
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- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Walter Sydney Adams — Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences
- ↑ MNRAS 117 (1957) 243
- ↑ Obs 76 (1956) 139
- ↑ PASP 68 (1956) 285
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ http://www.amphilsoc.org/mole/view?docId=ead/Mss.B.Ad19-ead.xml#bioghist
- ↑ F. Wesemael, A comment on Adams' measurement of the gravitational redshift of Sirius B Royal Astronomical Society, Quarterly Journal (ISSN 0035-8738), 26, Sept. 1985, 273-278
- ↑ Awarding of RAS gold medal
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- ↑ Bruce Medal page
- ↑ Awarding of Bruce Medal
- Pages with reference errors
- American astronomers
- Dartmouth College alumni
- Foreign Members of the Royal Society
- People from Antioch
- 1876 births
- 1956 deaths
- Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
- National Academy of Sciences laureates
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
