Abstract
THE Henry Draper Medal of the National Academy of Sciences awarded to Prof. R. W. Wood, of Johns Hopkins University, at the 1940 annual meeting of the Academy, in recognition of his contributions to astronomical physics, was presented to him during the annual meeting in April last. Prof. Wood's contributions in the field of physics have been many and varied, and in the field of astrophysics three important researches, among many others, stand out especially. The first is Wood's pioneer work on resonance radiation and its applications to solar and stellar spectroscopy. A second is his development and skilful use of absorption screens of many types for astronomical and spectroscopic photography. Finally, and perhaps more important of all for the future of astrophysics, are the remarkable advances he has made in the construction of diffraction gratings. The use of the grating to produce a spectrum has been limited hitherto almost wholly to the sun and to bright sources in the physical laboratory; by selection and shaping of the point of his ruling diamond, Wood succeeded in throwing as much as one half of the incident light into a chosen order of the spectrum. In addition, he was the first to achieve excellent results in ruling gratings on films of aluminium evaporated on glass. As a result, a modern Wood grating with high concentration of light is one of the most effective instruments of research in stellar spectroscopy. It has made possible the analysis of the spectra of the brighter stars on a large scale, has opened up the almost unexplored ultra–violet region of stellar spectra, and has already led to discoveries of interest regarding the constitution of the gases in interstellar space.
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Prof. R. W. Wood, For. Mem. R.S.: Henry Draper Medallist. Nature 148, 19 (1941). https://doi.org/10.1038/148019a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/148019a0