Background

Sherburne Wesley Burnham was born on December 12, 1838, in Thetford, Vermont. His parents were Roswell O. and Marinda (née Foote) Burnham.

Education

Burnham was a self-trained amateur astronomer with a formal education that ended with his graduation from Thetford Academy. Later in life, he received his Master of Arts degree granted by Yale in 1878 and in 1915 was honored with the Doctor of Science degree received from the Northwestern universities.

Career

Burnham set up a private observatory in Chicago with a 6-inch (15-cm) telescope. He became the world's leading observer of double stars. For a few years Burnham was on the staff of the Lick Observatory, on Mt. Hamilton, and later was an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory of the University of Chicago, at Williams Bay. In 1904 the Paris Academy of Sciences awarded him the Lalande prize in astronomy. He published several catalogs of double stars, the most important being the General Catalogue of Double Stars within 121°121d of the North Pole (1906). Burnham himself discovered more than 1, 300 double stars.

Achievements

• Burnham’s significant contributions to the study of double stars were the discovery of numerous visual binary systems, the measurement of their separation and position angles, and a critical compilation of information concerning all known northern pairs. When Burnham began observing in 1870, it was commonly assumed that the Struves and Herschels had found most of the binaries visible in the Northern Hemisphere. With the aid of excellent telescope lenses figured by Alvan Clark & Sons, as well as extraordinarily keen vision, Burnham proved otherwise. Indeed, many of his discoveries were new companions of stars or star systems that had already been carefully scrutinized. The culmination of these efforts came in 1900, with the publication of A General Catalogue of 1290 Double Stars Discovered from 1871 to 1899 by S. W. Burnham.
  
  Burnham devoted most of his lime at large telescopes to measuring difficult pairs - those with separations less than 1" and those of unequal magnitudes. He also measured the positions of components of suspected binaries relative to background stars for evidence of common proper motion, and hence of physical relation. For these measurements, Burnham designed and used a filar micrometer with greatly improved bright-wire illumination. To help identify his discoveries Burnham compiled, and finally published, A General Catalogue of Double Stars Within 121° of the North Pole, the first comprehensive and critical survey of all (13,665) known binaries in this region.
  
  For his astronomical work, Burnham was honored by the Royal Astronomical Society with an honorable membership (1874) and the Gold Medal in 1894. Also, in 1904 Burnham became a member of the Academie des Sciences receiving the Prix Lalande the same year.
  
  The lunar crater Burnham and asteroid 834 Burnhamia were named in his honor.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Collection of Articles On Double Star Observations 1880
  • A general catalogue of double stars within 121 of the North Pole 1906
  • Measures of Double Stars With the Inch Refractor of the Yerkes Observatory 1901
  • Catalogues Of 300 New Double Stars, Discovered In The Years 1871-4 1874
  • The Victorious 77Th Division (New York's Own) in the Argonne Fight 1919
  • Report To The Trustees Of The "james Lick Trust" Of Observations Made On Mt. Hamilton With Reference To The Location Of Lick Observatory 1880

Membership

In 1874 Burnham was made a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society of England.

• 

  Royal Astronomical Society of England , United Kingdom

  1874 - 1921

Personality

Burnham was known ad an indefatigable observer.

Connections

In 1870 Burnham married Mary Cleland Burnham.

Father:

Roswell O. Burnham

Mother:

Marinda (née Foote) Burnham

Wife:

Mary Cleland Burnham

1843–1927

References

• The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers
  2009
• Dictionary of scientific biography
  1981