William Wilson Morgan

Summary of research activity
The scientific activity has been concerned with organized, observational searches for regularities among the various categories of astronomical bodies (stars, clusters of stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies).
For stars, the means was stellar spectroscopy, whereby spectrograms of program stars were ordered by direct comparison with each other. In one such program, consisting of young, hot stars in the general solar neighbourhood of our Galaxy, its spiral structure was discovered by the writer, together with S. Sharpless and D.E. Osterbrock.
In the case of galaxies, a relationship was found between the optical form and the stellar population of the particular galaxy (Morgan and D.E. Osterbrock).
A classification of the optical forms of clusters of galaxies was found to be an indicator of galaxies known to be strong radio sources.