Adams, Walter Sydney (1876–1956) American astronomer Adams was born in Antioch (now in Turkey). He was the son of missionaries working in Syria, then part of the Ottoman Empire, who returned to America in 1885. Adams graduated from Dartmouth College in 1898 and obtained his AM from the University of Chicago in 1900. After a year in Munich he began his career in astronomy as assistant to George Hale in 1901 at the Yerkes Observatory. He moved with Hale to the newly established Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904 where he served as assistant director, 1913–23, and then as director from 1923 until his retirement in 1946.

At Mount Wilson Adams was able to use first the ...