Albert Whitford

Albert Edward Whitford ( born October 22, 1905 in Milton (Wisconsin ), † 28 March 2002) was an American astronomer.

Life

Whitford attended college in his home town of Milton. As a student at the University of Wisconsin he was an assistant to Joel Stebbins with whom he began a long-term cooperation. In 1932 he was awarded his doctorate. From 1948 to 1958 he was director of the Washburn Observatory of the University of Wisconsin from 1958 to 1968 and Director of the Lick Observatory, where under his leadership the 3m telescope was put into operation and its headquarters, he at the University of California, Santa Cruz moved. Later he studied further at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and returned in old age in 1996 back to the University of Wisconsin.

Work

Whitford was a pioneer of photoelectric photometry and improved their sensitivity considerably. Its reddening curve describing the dependence of the absorption of light by interstellar dust on the wavelength, was important for the determination of the distribution of stars in the Milky Way. He examined also stars in the bulge of the Milky Way.

Honors

The asteroid ( 2301 ) Whitford is named after him.