Walter Sydney Adams

Walter Sydney Adams (December 20 1876 – May 11 1956) was an American astronomer.

Life and work

He was born in Antioch, Syria to missionary parents, and was brought to the U.S. in 1885 [ F.J.M. Stratton. "Walter Sydney Adams. 1876-1956." "Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society", Vol. 2. (Nov., 1956), pp. 1-18.] He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1898, then continued his education 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. 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 in Pasadena, California.

Honors

Awards
*The Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1917)
*The Henry Draper Medal (1918)
*The Bruce Medal (1928)
*The Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (1947)

Named after him
*The asteroid 3145 Walter Adams.
*A crater on Mars.
*The Adams crater on the Moon is jointly named after him, John Couch Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams.

References

* "Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology", Isaac Asimov, Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1972, ISBN 0-385-17771-2.
* 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

External links

* [http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/BruceMedalists/Adams/index.html Bruce Medal page]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/PASP./0040//0000002.000.html Awarding of Bruce Medal]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0077//0000395.000.html Awarding of RAS gold medal]

Obituaries

* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0117//0000243.000.html MNRAS 117 (1957) 243]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/Obs../0076//0000139.000.html Obs 76 (1956) 139]
* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/PASP./0068//0000285.000.html PASP 68 (1956) 285]

Further reading

* cite encyclopedia
last = Wright
first = Helen
title = Adams, Walter Sydney
encyclopedia = Dictionary of Scientific Biography
volume = 1
pages = 54-58
publisher = Charles Scribner's Sons
location = New York
date = 1970
isbn = 0684101149