Edward Charles Pickering

Edward Charles Pickering 1846-1919, American astronomer and physicist, b. Boston, grad. Harvard (B.S., 1865); brother of W. H. Pickering. He was professor of physics (1868-77) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first in the United States to initiate general instruction in physics in a laboratory equipped with instruments and apparatus. The results of work in photographic photometry and spectroscopy done under his direction at the Harvard Observatory are recorded in more than a quarter of a million plates. Pickering devised several instruments, including the meridian photometer, used in the measurements. He set up a station in Arequipa, Peru, to observe the southern sky. In addition to editing 70 volumes (1855-1919) of the Annals of Harvard Observatory, he wrote Elements of Physical Manipulations (2 vol., 1873-76).

Pickering, EdwardCharles (1846–1919)Americanphysicist and astronomer, elder brother of W. H.Pickering. As director of Harvard College Observatory, he produced a catalogue of brightnesses for 4260 stars, the Harvard Photometry, in 1884, and extended the work in 1908 with the Harvard Revised Photometry. He was an early exponent of astrophotography, and built up an extensive library of photographic plates at Harvard. In 1903 he published the first photographic map of the whole sky. In the 1880s, Pickering began a programme to classify stellar spectra, discovering in the process the first spectroscopic binary, Mizar A. He invented a method for recording several spectra on one plate by placing a large, low-dispersion prism in front of the telescope. The routine work was largely carried out by a team of women assistants, including A. J.Cannon, W. P.Fleming, and Antonia Caetana de Paiva Pereira Maury (1866–1952). The programme yielded the Harvard classification and the Henry Draper Catalogue of stellar spectra.