Benjamin Apthorp Gould | |
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.jpg) Benjamin Apthorp Gould | |
| Born | (1824-09-27)September 27, 1824 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Died | November 26, 1896(1896-11-26) (aged 72) |
| Alma mater | Harvard College |
| Known for | Astronomical Journal Gould Belt Gould designations |
| Spouse | Mary Apthorp Quincy Gould |
| Awards | James Craig Watson Medal1887 Gold Medal of the RAS1883 |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
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Benjamin Apthorp Gould (September 27, 1824 – November 26, 1896) was a pioneering Americanastronomer. He is noted for creating theAstronomical Journal, discovering theGould Belt, and for founding of theArgentine National Observatory and theArgentine National Weather Service.
He was born inBoston, Massachusetts, the son of Lucretia Dana (Goddard) and Benjamin Apthorp Gould, the principal ofBoston Latin School, which the younger Gould attended.[1] The poetHannah Flagg Gould was his aunt. After going on toHarvard College and graduating in 1844, he studied mathematics andastronomy underC. F. Gauss atGöttingen, Germany, during which time he published approximately 20 papers on the observation and motion ofcomets andasteroids. Following completion of his Ph.D. (he was the first American to receive this degree in astronomy) he toured European observatories asking for advice on what could be done to further astronomy as a professional science in the U.S.A. The main advice he received was to start a professional journal modeled after what was then the world's leading astronomical publication, theAstronomische Nachrichten.
Gould returned to America in 1848 and from 1852 to 1867 worked in theUnited States Coast Survey, where he worked ingeodetic astronomy and was in charge of thelongitude department.[2] He developed and organized the service, was one of the first todetermine longitudes by telegraphic means, and employed the Atlantic cable in 1866 to establishaccurate longitude-relations between Europe and America. One of his assistants and life-long mentee wasSeth Carlo Chandler, who went on to discover theChandler wobble.
After his return toCambridge, Massachusetts, Gould started theAstronomical Journal in 1849, which he published until 1861. He resumed publication in 1885 and it is still published today. From 1855 to 1859 he acted as director of theDudley Observatory atAlbany, New York, and in 1859 published a discussion of the places and proper motions of circumpolar stars to be used as standards by the United States Coast Survey. In 1861 he undertook the enormous task of preparing for publication the records of astronomical observations made at theUnited States Naval Observatory since 1850.
In 1851 Gould suggested numbering asteroids in their order of discovery, and placing this number in a disk (circle) as the generic symbol of an asteroid. That same year, he was elected as a member to theAmerican Philosophical Society.[3]
In 1864 he was admitted to the MassachusettsSociety of the Cincinnati to represent his grandfather Captain Benjamin Gould. In the 1890s he became an early member of the Massachusetts Society of theSons of the American Revolution.
Appointed in 1862 actuary to theUnited States Sanitary Commission, he issued in 1869 an important volume ofInvestigations in the Military and Anthropological Statistics of American Soldiers. This study, informed by Gould's commitment to race science, purported to construct typologies of Black and Indigenous bodies, in particular.[4] In 1864 he fitted up a private observatory at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and undertook in 1868, on behalf of theArgentine republic, to organize a national observatory atCórdoba. In 1871 he became the first director of the Argentine National Observatory (today,Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba of theNational University of Córdoba). While there, he and four assistants (includingMiles Rock) extensively mapped the southern hemisphere skies using newly developed photometric methods. On June 1, 1884, he made the last definite sighting of theGreat Comet of 1882. The need of astronomers for good weather prediction spurred Gould to collaborate with Argentine colleagues to develop the Argentine National Weather Service, the first in South America.
Gould's measurements ofL. M. Rutherfurd's photographs of thePleiades in 1866 entitle him to rank as a pioneer in the use of the camera as an instrument of precision; and he secured at Córdoba 1400 negatives of southernstar clusters, the reduction of which occupied the closing years of his life. He remained inArgentina until 1885, when he returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received theGold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1883 and theJames Craig Watson Medal in 1887. Astronomers continue to investigate the astrophysics of a large scale feature of theMilky Way to which he called their attention in 1877, and honor him with its name,The Gould Belt. Acrater on theMoon is named after him. Gould was elected a member of theAmerican Antiquarian Society in 1892.[5] He died atCambridge, Massachusetts in 1896.
In 1874, while in Argentina with his assistants, Gould completed his greatest work, theUranometria Argentina, consisting of an atlas published in 1877 and catalog in 1879, for which he received in 1883 the gold medal of theRoyal Astronomical Society. The atlas introduced the system of defining constellation boundaries along lines of right ascension and declination, which was officially adopted by the International Astronomical Union for the whole sky in 1930.[6] The catalog assignedGould designations to all bright stars within 100 degrees of thesouth celestial pole in a manner similar to whatFlamsteed had earlier done for the northern hemisphere. An updated version, to which late 20th century data have been appended to the complete information for all stars in the original Uranometria Argentina, is available atwww.uranometriaargentina.com/.
Gould followed hisUranometria Argentina with a zone-catalogue of 73,160 stars (1884), and a general catalogue (1885) compiled from meridian observations of 32,448 stars.
Alice Bache Gould (1868–1953), a mathematician, philanthropist, and historian, was one of his five children.[7]
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