Walter Sydney Adams

Walter Sydney Adams ( born December 20, 1876 in Antakya, Turkey, † 11 May 1956 Pasadena, USA ) was an American astronomer. He was from 1923 to 1946 director of the Mount Wilson Observatory in California.

Adams was born from a mission members of the mission of Antioch, Syria, and brought to the United States in 1885. He graduated from Dartmouth College, graduated in 1898 and studied afterwards in Germany. After his return to the United States, he was finally director of the Mount Wilson Observatory.

Adams found together with Arnold Kohlschütter a relationship of the relative intensity of certain spectral lines with the luminosity of a star. He reasoned thus the possibility of spectroscopic distance determination of stars ( spectroscopic parallax). With this method, he measured the distance of hundreds of stars of the main sequence and giant stars. He discovered with the star Sirius B the first known white dwarf and its measurements of its gravitational redshift was a further confirmation of general relativity. In addition, Adams was known by the spectroscopic studies of sunspots and the solar rotation.

According to him, the martian crater Adams and the asteroid ( 3145 ) Walter Adams was named. The lunar crater Adams is named after him and after John Couch Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams.

Awards

May 11 Pasadena, California Adams (lunar crater) Prix Jules Janssen Astrophysics Data System Integrated Authority File
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