Dyson, Sir Frank Watson

Dyson, Sir Frank Watson (dī`sən), 1868–1939, English astronomer, b. Ashby-de-la-Zouch, grad. Cambridge. He was astronomer royal of Scotland (1905–10) and of England (from 1910). As director (1910–33) of Greenwich Observatory he greatly expanded its research activities and inaugurated (1928) the wireless transmission of Greenwich time. Noted for his study of solar eclipses, he was an authority on the spectrum of the corona and on the chromosphere; his observations of an eclipse (in Brazil, 1919) confirmed Einstein's theory of the effect of gravity on light. Dyson plotted the motions of many previously uncharted stars. A fellow of the Royal Society from 1901, he was knighted in 1915. His publications include Astronomy: A Handy Manual (1910) and Eclipses of the Sun and Moon (with Richard Woolley, 1937).