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Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers pp 2351–2352Cite as

Wilson, Olin Chaddock, Jr.

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Born San Francisco, California, USA, 13 January 1909

Died West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, 14 July 1994

American stellar spectroscopist Olin Chaddock Wilson, Jr. – the suffix disappeared in the 1940s – discovered the first set of stellar activity cycles analogous to the solar sunspot cycle and is eponymized in the Wilson-Bappu effect, a correlation between the absolute brightness of cool stars and the strength of the emission-line cores in strong absorption lines due to hydrogen and calcium.

By the time Wilson earned the BA degree in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1930, the 60-in. telescope no longer stood as the largest in the world: It had been surpassed by the mighty 100-in. Hooker telescope on Mount Wilson, which saw first light on 2 November 1917.

Wilson received the first Ph.D. awarded in astronomy by the California Institute of Technology, in 1934, for work on a comparison of the Paschen and Balmer series of hydrogen lines in stellar spectra, done with ...

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Selected References

  • Abt, Helmut A. (2002). “Olin Chaddock Wilson.” Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences 82: 353–371.

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  • Preston, George W. (1995). “Olin C. Wilson (1909–1994).” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 107: 97–103.

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  • Wilson, Olin C. (1963). “Lithium in a Main Sequence Star.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific 75: 62–64.

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  • --- (1976). “Chromospheric Variations in Main Sequence Stars.” In Basic Mechanisms of Solar Activity, edited by Vaclav Bumba and Josip Kleczek, pp. 447–452. IAU Symposium No. 71. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

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  • --- (1982). “Photoelectric Measures of Chromospheric H and K and Hε in Giant Stars.” Astrophysical Journal 257: 179–192.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sallie Baliunas

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  1. Sallie Baliunas
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Correspondence to Sallie Baliunas .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Science, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA, USA

    Thomas Hockey

  2. University of California, Irvine School of Physical Sciences, Irvine, CA, USA

    Virginia Trimble

  3. Rice University, Houston, TX, USA

    Thomas R. Williams

  4. Whitman College, Walla Walla, WA, USA

    Katherine Bracher

  5. York Univesity, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Richard A. Jarrell

  6. University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA

    Jordan D. Marché II

  7. University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, USA

    JoAnn Palmeri

  8. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Daniel W. E. Green

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Baliunas, S. (2014). Wilson, Olin Chaddock, Jr.. In: , et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_1484

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