Harry Edwin Wood

Harry Edwin Wood (3 February 1881 – 27 February 1946) was an English astronomer, director of the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, and discoverer of minor planets.^[2][3]

Wood was born in Manchester, graduating from Manchester University in 1902 with first class honours in physics, going on to gain an MSc in 1905. In 1906 he was appointed the Chief Assistant at the Transvaal Meteorological Observatory, which soon acquired telescopes and which became known as the Union Observatory and later Republic Observatory. In July 1906, he established South Africa's first 24-hour weather forecasts through telegraph in the Transvaal.^[1] In 1909, he married Mary Ethel Greengrass, also a physics graduate of Manchester University. Wood served as the observatory's director from 1928 to 1941, succeeding Robert Innes. He also served as the president of the Astronomical Society of South Africa from 1929 to 1930.^[2]

Wood is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 12 numbered asteroids during 1911–1932.^[4]

He died in Mortimer, near Cradock, South Africa, in 1946. The asteroid 1660 Wood, discovered by his colleague Jacobus Bruwer at Johannesburg, is named in his honour (M.P.C. 3297).^[3]