While there, he received the John H. Moreland prize for his work in Greek studies, and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
He received a Lick Observatory fellowship in 1932 and spent two years at the mountain peak site researching the spectra of eclipsing binary star systems.
[6] The two men were good friends, and they collaborated on several papers regarding radial velocity measurements of H II regions in the nearby M31 and M33 spiral galaxies.
[9] Prior to the US entry into World War II, both Wyse and Mayall had applied for Naval Reserve commissions.
[2][10] On June 8, 1942, Wyse was an OSRD scientist on board the U.S. Navy airship L-2 operating off the coast of Manasquan, New Jersey.
They were working in tandem with airship G-1 conducting scientific tests of underwater flares for the detection of German submarines.
On March 24, 1944, President F. D. Roosevelt signed a bill that provided government compensation to the family of Wyse and the other OSRD scientists lost in the accident.