text: In October 1953, Bidelman was hired as an assistant astronomer at Lick Observatory. This observatory of the University of California is located on Mount Hamilton (California). The Bidelman family lived on Mount Hamilton and the children attended a one-room school where it was an hour's drive to the nearest grocery store. According to Stanislaus Vasilevskis, due to the lack of a high school for children and other features, Bidelman moved from Mount Hamilton to San Jose, and commuted to work.
  Otto Struve had left the Chicago for The University of California in 1950. Bidelman lectured for Struve's Graduate Seminar on Astrophysics at Berkeley in 1955. He and George Herbig also gave ten lectures together on stellar spectroscopy at Berkeley during the 1954–55 academic year. Bidelman served on the program committee for the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Astronomical Society of the Pacific meeting in 1955.
  In 1953, Bidelman was the first to describe the hydrogen–deficient carbon star group, although Hans Ludendorff had found the appearance of weak hydrogen in R CrB in 1906.
  In 1951, Bidelman informed other astronomers of his intentions to publish a catalogue with data for all known emission-line stars and requested they contribute data to be incorporated into it. He researched emission-line stars for his catalogue and bibliography at Yerkes Observatory (Wisconsin) and McDonald Observatory (Texas), and spent six weeks during the summer at the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories (California), funded by the Department of Naval Research. While at Yerkes, Morgan, Strömgren, and Chandrasekhar had encouraged Bidelman to prepare such a catalogue, and his catalogue and bibliography of 1,640 middle and late-type emission-line stars was among the ten most-cited papers in astronomy in 1954. Bidelmans catalogue included many stars with Ca II H and K emission. In 1996, Helmut Abt researched which papers published in 1954 were cited most frequently from 1955 to 1995, and Bidelmans Catalog and Bibliography ranked among the top four.
  Bidelman served on the Astronomical Society of the Pacifics Nominating Committee and Publications Committees in 1955. When Seth B. Nicholson, Chairman of the Publications Committee for thirteen years retired, he nominated Bidelman as the next chairman. Bidelman resigned from the Nominating Committee, and became the Editor of the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific'. the scientific journal of the ASP, which gives the gives the Bruce Gold Medal.
  In 1957, the Directors discussed but did not act on making the editor a salaried position. In 1958, the Publications Committee published over 100 papers, over 20 book reviews, and two symposia. Re-elected to the Board of Directors, Bidelman was authorized to spend up to $1,000 for editorial assistance in 1959, and they published over 90 papers from ~38 institutions, 15 book reviews and a symposium. His report noted it was a time-consuming task, made more difficult because he had been out of the country for two months that year. in 1960, they published six issues including 100 papers from ten countries, other articles and book reviews, and fulfilled reprint orders.
  He was Third Vice President of ASP in 1961, and they published six issues totaling 543 pages, including 100 articles from the United States and nine other countries, and other papers. Bidelmans annual report said being "largely responsible for the welfare" of the journal for approximately five years had been a considerable burden and having found it impossible to find a sufficiently competent technical assistant on Mount Hamilton and not being able to fulfill his obligations to both the university and to ASP, he requested to resign effective July 1, 1961, He was re-elected to the board of directors. his resignation became effective in mid-August and an assistant editor was added to the staff in September. Bidelman summarized his experiences in a 1989 talk entitled "A funny thing happened on the way to the Stanford Press - reminiscences of Five Years with the PASP'".
  In 1962, Bidelman helped Soviet astronomers edit a manuscript for English readers, He continued on the ASP Publications Committee, no longer as chair, in 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970. When Helmut Abt explored the number of reference errors in astronomy journal articles in 1992, he said the only astronomical editor he was aware of who checked every reference in his journal and found many errors "to which he called the authors attention—was William P. Bidelman when he edited these Publications'".
  While he was editor, Bidelman was the general supervisor of the students at Lick Observatory. According to Hyron Spinrad, Bidelman encouraged astronomy students at the Berkeley campus to make observations at Lick Observatory. Spinrad recalled: "I don't know how he was regarded on Mt. Hamilton, but at Berkeley he was regarded as sort of a good will emissary from the mountain".
  In March 1962, Bidelman used three peculiar stars, 3 Centauri, κ Cancri and 112 Herculis, to make the first certain identification of the rare element gallium II (Ga II) in stellar spectra, with lab work assistance by Charles H. Corliss at the National Bureau of Standards, which they reported in May 1962.
  T Tauri, the prototype of the T-Tauri stars, is a young star found in the constellation Taurus. In November 1962, Bidelman found ~100 times more gallium I in the spectrum of T Tauri than is found in the spectrum of the sun. Bidelman noted that it was at present "impossible to explain these abundance anomalies in terms of known nucleogenesis patterns".