Edward C. Pickering, the Henry Draper Memorial, and the beginnings of astrophysics in America

Summary

Henry Draper, one of America's pioneer astrophysicists, launched a great period of advancement in astrophysics in 1872 when he succeeded in obtaining a photograph of a stellar spectrum exhibiting absorption lines. Shortly after his death in 1882, his widow established the Henry Draper Fund at the Harvard College Observatory, where Edward C. Pickering and his assistants began a long-range program of photographing, measuring, and classifying the spectra of the stars. As a result, Harvard was able to establish itself as the foremost institution in the United States for astrophysical research. Pickering's investigation culminated in the publication of ‘The Henry Draper Catalogue’, in which nearly a quarter of a million stellar spectra are measured and classified. The classification scheme embodied in the Draper catalogue is still heavily relied on today by all astrophysicists, and the Henry Draper Memorial has become a milestone in the history of astrophysics.