Edward Pickering

Born on 19 July 1846 in Boston, Edward Charles Pickering was a leading astronomer and physicist. He was educated at Harvard and taught physics for 10 years at MIT, where he set up the first ever instructional physics laboratory in the US and introduced other innovations in the teaching of physics. In 1876 Pickering was appointed director of the Harvard College Observatory, where he studied astrophysics and pioneered the use of visual photometry, stellar spectroscopy, and astrophotography. To help with the study of all those spectra, he hired more than 80 women to work in the observatory. Among the assistants he hired was Henrietta Swan Leavitt , who discovered the period–luminosity relationship of Cepheid variable stars, and Annie Jump Cannon , who devised a stellar classification system still used today. During his 42-year tenure at the Harvard Observatory, Pickering and his assistants made visual photometric studies of 45 000 stars; Pickering alone made more than a million photometric measurements. He received many awards, including the Bruce Medal from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, and served as president of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Astronomical Society. He died in 1919.

Date in History: 19 July 1846