Edwin Brant Frost

Edwin Brant Frost II (July 14, 1866 – May 14, 1935) was an American astronomer and longest serving Director of the Yerkes Observatory serving from 1905 to 1932.

Biography He was born in Brattleboro, Vermont. His father, Carlton Pennington Frost,

Frost graduated from Dartmouth in 1886. He continued his education as a post-graduate student in chemistry and in 1887 became an instructor in physics while only 21 years old.

He died in 1935 in Chicago from peritonitis.

Legacy Frost's research focused on the determination of radial velocity using stellar spectroscopy and spectroscopic binaries. In 1902, he discovered the strange behavior of Beta Cephei, which later became the prototype for Beta Cephei variable stars.

He played a significant role in bringing Otto Struve to the United States, when the latter was living as an impoverished refugee in Turkey after the Russian Revolution. He later supported the appointment of Struve as his successor as director of Yerkes Observatory.

Asteroid 854 Frostia is named in his honor, as is the lunar crater Frost, on the far side of the Moon.