User:MarkHurn/Hugh Frank Newall

Hugh Frank Newall (1857 – 1944) was a British astronomer.

Born in Gateshead, the son of Scottish engineer and astronomer Robert Stirling Newall, he was educated at Rugby School, then Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1886 he became an assistant to J.J. Thompson working at the Cavendish Laboratory.

His work in astrophysics began when his fathers great telescope (a 25 inch refractor by Cooke) was given to the Cambridge Observatory in 1889. To be near the telescope, Hugh Frank Newall, a wealthy man, built the house Madingley Rise next to the Observatory and moved in 1891. His work at the Observatory was self-funded. From 1891 to 1904 he took the title of Newall Observer, then from 1904 to 1913 Assistant Director, then from 1913 to retirement in 1928 he was Director of the Solar Physics Observatory at Cambridge. In 1909 he was appointed professor of astrophysics by the University of Cambridge (still without stipend).

Newall designed a spectrograph for the telescope and began studying stellar spectra, from 1894 he pioneered work on radial velocities. In 1899 he discovered (independently of W.W. Campbell at the Lick Observatory) that Capella was a spectroscopic binary star. He also was involved with studies of the Sun taking an active part in several eclipse expeditions.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1902.

Newall was described by E.A. Milne as "one of the fathers of astrophysics in Great Britain".