The American astronomer Edward Charles Pickering (1846-1919) was a pioneer in the fields of stellar spectroscopy and photometry.

Edward Pickering was born on July 19, 1846, in Boston, Mass., of a distinguished New England family. After studying at Boston Latin School, he attended Lawrence Scientific School, graduating summa cum laude in 1865. He taught mathematics at that institution for a year and then moved to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, becoming Thayer professor of physics in 1868. He married Elizabeth Wardsworth Sparks in 1874.

In 1876 Pickering accepted the directorship of the Harvard Observatory, an appointment that both surprised and angered many, for he had no experience as an observational astronomer. The choice of a physicist, however, placed Harvard in the leadership of the trend, growing since the midcentury, toward a "new astronomy" which used the methods of the physicist to seek a knowledge of stellar structure and its evolution. The day of the observer...