Morgan, William Wilson

William Wilson Morgan, (born Jan. 3, 1906, Bethesda, Tenn., U.S.—died June 21, 1994, Williams Bay, Wis.), American astronomer who, in 1951, provided the first evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy has spiral arms.

Morgan studied at the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1931) and then became an instructor at the Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago. He taught at that university from 1947 until his retirement in 1974, and he was director of the Yerkes and McDonald Observatories from 1960 to 1963. During his career he received many awards and honours.

Morgan was an astronomical morphologist who devoted his career to studying and classifying stars and galaxies. His first significant contribution was a correlation of the spectra of stars with their distances from the Earth, published as the Atlas of Stellar Spectra (1943). After discovering the spiral structure of the Milky Way Galaxy, he focused on problems of star brightness, devising a system of classifying star magnitude and colour, discovering “flash” variable stars (stars that have quickly changing luminosity), and establishing the UBV (ultraviolet-blue-visual) magnitudes system for photometry. In 1956 Morgan began to study and classify galaxies, grouping them by stellar qualities, stellar population, and form.