William Sadler Franks


William Sadler Franks was a British astronomer.
He published a catalogue of the colours of 3890 stars.
Franks was employed between 1892 and 1904 by the wealthy amateur astronomer Isaac Roberts as an assistant to support the photographic observations of star clusters and nebulae at Roberts's private observatory at Crowborough in Sussex.
In 1910 he was hired by F. J. Hanbury to work as an observer at Hanbury's private Brockhurst Observatory at East Grinstead in Sussex. He continued his studies of the colours of stars there, and also made micrometer measurements of double stars. In 1923 he won the Jackson-Gwilt Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
One of the other observers who used the Brockhurst Observatory with Franks was a teenage Patrick Moore.