William Albert Hiltner was an American astronomer

Astronomer

An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...

, noted for his work leading up to the discovery of interstellar polarization. He was an early practitioner of precision stellar photometry, and a pioneering observer of the optical counterparts of celestial x-ray sources. Director of the Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the University of Chicago in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The observatory, which calls itself "the birthplace of modern astrophysics," was founded in 1897 by George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles T. Yerkes...

 for many years, while there he designed and built a rotatable telescope for polarization studies and developed photometric instrumentation. He was the acting director of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory, then president of the Associated Universities for Research in Astronomy from 1968 until 1971, and was appointed as a director of the University of Michigan in 1970; a post he held until 1982. He established MDM Observatory

MDM Observatory

The MDM Observatory is an optical astronomical observatory on Kitt Peak , adjacent to Kitt Peak National Observatory. It is owned and operated by the University of Michigan, Dartmouth College, Ohio State University, Columbia University, and Ohio University...

 and led the construction of the Hiltner Telescope which is named for him.