[2] In 1897 he was awarded the Lalande Prize and gold medal by the Paris Academy of Sciences given each year ″to the person who makes the most outstanding observation ... to further the progress of Astronomy, in France or elsewhere.″.

[11] Following high school graduation in 1884,[12] he moved to Alameda, California in about 1886 and worked as a bookkeeper at Armour & Co., a meat-packing business in San Francisco.

Interested in photography and astronomy from an early age,[2] and unable to afford a college education, "he nevertheless looked forward to engaging in astronomical work".

[7] Perrine responded to a general invitation to amateurs in astronomy and photography from E. S. Holden, the Director of the newly established Lick Observatory[13] (1888), to observe the total solar eclipse of January 1, 1889 in Northern California.

[15] Holden agreed to Perrine's "fixed purpose of devoting his spare time to the study of astronomical and related subjects, by way of preparation for later observatory duties".

In 1904-05 he discovered the sixth and seventh moons of Jupiter, today known as Himalia (December 3, 1904) and Elara (February 21, 1905) using telescopic photography (glass plate negatives) with the 36-inch Crossley Reflector which he had recently rebuilt.

The Argentine National Observatory led by Perrine made the first attempt to test Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity by observing the deflection of star light near the Sun at a total solar eclipse.

[28][29][30][31][32] Perrine wrote, "The Cordoba Observatory made the first definite attempt to secure observations at an eclipse (that of 1912) for the relativity problem and that was done at the instigation of Dr.

[33] Dr. Erwin Finlay-Freundlich, a German astronomer and mathematician, took up Einstein's challenge and contacted Perrine in 1911 and 1912 to ask if he would undertake a test of light deflection near the Sun.

[36] Perrine's photograph of the total solar eclipse of August 21, 1914 was the first taken in an attempt to measure star light deflection near the Sun which effect was predicted by Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity in 1911.