W. W. Campbell

William Wallace Campbell (April 11, 1862 – June 14, 1938) was an American astronomer, and director of Lick Observatory from 1901 to 1930. He specialized in spectroscopy.

He was born on a farm in Hancock County, Ohio, the son of Robert Wilson and Harriet Welsh Campbell. After a few years of local schooling he entered in 1882 the University of Michigan to study civil engineering, graduating Bachelor of Science in 1886. Whilst at university he developed his interest in astronomy when he read Simon Newcomb's Popular Astronomy.

After graduating he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the University of Colorado but soon moved back to Michigan as an instructor in astronomy. In 1891 he was invited to work on spectroscopy at Lick Observatory in California. Campbell was a pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy and catalogued the radial velocities of stars. He was also recognized for his work in solar eclipse photography. In 1893 he discovered the Wolf–Rayet star HD 184738 (also known as Campbell's hydrogen envelope star). He was made a director of Lick Observatory from 1901 to 1930.

In August 1914, Campbell and Erwin Freundlich of the Berlin Observatory were in Russia to photograph a solar eclipse, in an early attempt to test the validity of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. The outbreak of World War I (and in particular Germany's declaration of war against Russia) led to the seizure of Freundlich and his equipment in the Crimea by Russian officers. Campbell, from neutral America, was permitted to continue with his plans, but cloud cover obscured the eclipse. Campbell undertook another attempt to photograph a solar eclipse on June 8, 1918, in Goldendale, in Washington state. But his precision photographic equipment had been retained in Russia four years earlier, and he had to improvise the needed apparatus from existing equipment at the Lick Observatory. The cameras he used were not able to confirm the deflection of star light predicted by Einstein's theory.

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