Campbell, William Wallace
Campbell, William Wallace
(1862–1938) astronomer; born in Hancock County, Ohio. Author of The Elements of Practical Astronomy (1899), he deduced that the Martian atmosphere could not support life (1894). He worked at California's Lick Observatory (1890–1923), becoming its director in 1901. Working with the Mills spectrograph he measured stellar radial velocities and published them (with Joseph Moore) in a catalogue (1928). He presided over the University of California: Mt. Hamilton (1923–30) and the National Academy of Sciences (1931–35).Campbell, William Wallace
Born Apr. 11, 1862, in Hancock, Ohio; died June 14, 1938, in San Francisco. American astronomer.
Campbell was in charge of the Lick Observatory in California from 1901 to 1930. His studies were devoted to astronomical spectroscopy (the calculation of the radial velocities of stars, spectral investigations of the atmosphere of Mars). He also conducted observations of the sun during eclipses. Campbell calculated the velocities and direction of the motion of the sun in space from the radial velocities of stars (1911).