William Henry Pickering
1858 - 1938
William Henry Pickering, the astronomer, was born in Boston in 1858. He was the younger brother of Edward C. Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory (HCO). He studied physics at MIT and earned his degree in 1879. He became an instructor of physics at MIT after graduation and established a teaching photographic laboratory at the Institute. In 1887 he joined the staff of the Harvard College Observatory. Later he was appointed assistant professor at Harvard. He held this position until his retirement in 1924.
William Pickering saw his first total solar eclipse in 1878 and published a report on coronal polarization while he was still a student. After that, he was hooked. He led Harvard expeditions to observe eclipses in 1886, 1889, 1893, and 1900.
In 1889 William Pickering suggested that Mount Wilson in California would be a favorable site for an observatory, and erected a small Harvard substation on the mountain. William Pickering served as an early director of the station in Arequipa as well.
William worked with his brother Edward in perfecting the photography of fields of stars from as early as 1882. In 1900, Edward procured a new type of telescope for astrophotography and asked William to test it. The telescope had an objective with a 12-inch aperture and a focal length of 135 feet. William set up the telescope in Mandeville, Jamaica near Kingston. He used the telescope to produce the first photographic atlas of the Moon, which was published in 1903 after his return to Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In 1911, Edward Pickering established an HCO observing station in Mandeville. William gladly returned to Jamaica as director of the station. The station was supported by in part by the Boyden Fund and in part by William's own resources. He spent most of his time in Jamaica observing visually with an 11-inch Clark telescope, which had formerly belonged to Henry Draper. He also photographed double stars and sections of the Milky Way.
When William retired from Harvard in 1924, HCO severed its connection with the Mandeville station, and the site became William's private observatory. He lived there until his death in 1938.
Other notable achievements of William Pickering include the discovery of Phoebe, the 9th moon of Saturn, and his prediction of a planet beyond Neptune.