Walter Sydney Adams
Walter Sydney Adams
Born	December 20, 1876(1876-12-20) Antioch, Syria
Died	May 11, 1956 (aged 79) Pasadena, California
Nationality	United States
Fields	astronomy
Institutions	Mount Wilson Observatory
Alma mater	Dartmouth College

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

[edit] Life and work

He was born in Antioch, Syria to missionary parents, and was brought to the U.S. in 1885^[1] 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 at the age of 79 in Pasadena, California.

[edit] 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 crater Adams on the Moon is jointly named after him, John Couch Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams.

[edit] References

1. ^ F.J.M. Stratton. "Walter Sydney Adams. 1876-1956." Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Vol. 2. (Nov., 1956), pp. 1-18.

• 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

[edit] External links

• Bruce Medal page
• Awarding of Bruce Medal
• Awarding of RAS gold medal

[edit] Obituaries

• MNRAS 117 (1957) 243
• Obs 76 (1956) 139
• PASP 68 (1956) 285

[edit] Further reading

• Wright, Helen (1970). "Adams, Walter Sydney". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 54–58. ISBN 0684101149.