Frost, Edwin Brant, 1866-1935

Astronomer. Dartmouth College, A. B. 1886; A. M. 1889; D. Sc. 1911; D. Sc. (hon.) Cambridge University, 1912; studies physics and astonomy, Princeton, Strassburg (Germany), Astrophysical Observatory, Potsdam, Germany. Taught physics and astronomy at Dartmouth, 1887-1898; professor of astrophysics, University of Chicago, 1898- (and director of observatory, 1892); director of Yerkes Observatory, 1905-1932, emeritis.

Yerkes Observatory, located in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, is a facility of the University of Chicago's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. The observatory opened in 1897 as the joint creation of three founders: William Rainey Harper, the first president of the University of Chicago; Professor George E. Hale, the observatory’s first director; and Charles T. Yerkes, a wealthy Chicago businessman who provided funds for the erection of the observatory building. On the shores of Lake Geneva, this observatory was designed by Henry Ives Cobb, with landscape architecture by John Olmsted.

Yerkes became known in the astronomical community as the home of the last of the great refracting telescopes, a 40-inch instrument first exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. The observatory housed the university's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics until the 1960s, and was the site of some of the most significant research in modern astronomy and astrophysics.

In 1932, the University of Chicago struck an agreement with the University of Texas to construct an observatory endowed by the Texas banker William Johnson McDonald (1844–1926). Texas at that time had neither the funds nor the faculty for its operation. Under the agreement, the observatory was to be constructed and operated under the direction of Otto Struve, with the understanding that eventually University of Texas would assume complete responsibility for McDonald Observatory. As such, Dr. Struve became the first director of McDonald Observatory. The agreement between University of Chicago and the University of Texas was modified in 1959 as Texas’ program in astronomy broadened, and in 1962-1963 the entire operation of McDonald Observatory was placed under the Department of Astronomy at The University of Texas.

Edwin B. Frost (1866-1935), professor of astrophysics at the University of Chicago and Director of the University’s Yerkes Observatory at Williams Bay, Wisconsin. He received his A.B. at Dartmouth in 1886 and did his advanced study in physics and astronomy at Princeton, Potsdam and Strassburg. He was a member of the Dartmouth faculty from 1887 to 1898.

Frost first came into prominence as an astronomer at the beginning of the 20th century, at about the time the spectroscope was being introduced into the study of heavenly bodies on a systematic scale. He went on to become a leader in the development of the field of astrophysics. Frost came to Yerkes Observatory in 1898 and served as professor of astrophysics from 1898 to 1905. When observatory director George E. Hale left Yerkes to head the Mount Wilson Observatory at Pasadena, Frost assumed the directorship.

In 1906, Frost undertook a fifteen year program of stellar observation to map, classify and determine the velocities of the stars in the Orion constellation. Following the completion of the project, Frost gradually went blind. Despite his disability, he continued to work on the faculty until 1932. After his retirement, he remained at his lakeside home near the observatory, working in an advisory capacity.