Wallace L. W. Sargent

Wallace Leslie William Sargent FRS (February 15, 1935 – October 29, 2012) was a British-born American astronomer and the Ira S. Bowen Professor of Astronomy at California Institute of Technology.

Sargent was born in Elsham, North Lincolnshire, the son of a gardener and a housecleaner, and grew up in Winterton, Lincolnshire. Sargent was the first person in his family to attend high school, and the first student from his high school to ever attend college. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Manchester in 1956, and his Ph.D. in 1959 from the same institution.

Sargent spent the majority of his career at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), excepting an absence of four years during which he claims to have had to go back to England to find himself a wife, Anneila Sargent.

Sargent was known for his studies of quasar absorption lines.

He supervised the theses of a number of students while at Caltech, including John Huchra, Edwin Turner, Charles C. Steidel,and Alex Filippenko.

He was director of the Palomar Observatory from 1997 to 2000.

• Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy (1969)
• Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics (1991)
• Bruce Medal (1994)
• Henry Norris Russell Lectureship (2001)
• Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1981
• The Asteroid 11758 Sargent is named in his honor

Sargent was married to fellow Caltech astronomer Anneila Sargent from 1964 until his death. Although he became a U.S. citizen, he was born in Elsham, England. He was an atheist.