William Wilson Morgan Quotes

United States, Astronomer
January 3, 1906 – June, 21, 1994.

William Wilson Morgan was an American astronomer and astrophysicist. The principal theme in Dr. Morgan's work was stellar and galaxy classification. He is also known for helping prove the existence of spiral arms in our galaxy. In addition to his scientific achievements he served as a professor and as astronomy director for University of Chicago, and was the managing editor for George Hale's Astrophysical Journal.

[Otto Struve] made the remark once that he never looked at the spectrum of a star, any star, where he didn't find something important to work on.

William Wilson Morgan
Classification is now a pejorative statement. You know, these classifiers look like "dumb fools." I'm a classifier. But I'd like to use a word that includes more than what people consider is encompassed by classification. It is more than that, and it's something which can be called phenomenology.

William Wilson Morgan

I remember my father had a sermon he used to preach when we were in Florida, in which he gave a reference to the Southern Cross-about the stars, the colors, in the Southern Cross, which thrilled me very much. I must have been around 5 years old. ... Now, it turns out that the Southern Cross itself does have one red star, together with three blue ones.

William Wilson Morgan