Dr. Benjamin Apthorp Gould

Abstract

ANOTHER busy life, devoted to the advancement of astronomy, is ended by the death of Dr. B. A. Gould. Practically, half a century has passed since his name came prominently before the public, in connection with the establishment of an astronomical journal in America, and throughout this period he has maintained a foremost place in the ranks of American astronomers by the unwearying energy he has exhibited, and the mass of work he has accomplished. For many years he was attached to the United States Coast Survey, where, under Superintendents Bache and Peirce, he did good service in the determination of longitudes at stations along the Atlantic seaboard, from New Orleans to the extreme north-eastern boundary of the United States. In those early days the employment of the method of telegraphic signals had not long been in use in America, and was scarcely known in Europe, and its subsequent development for longitude investigations owes much to the energy that Dr. Gould brought to bear upon problems of this character. When the Atlantic cable was successfully laid, he perceived the advantages it offered to connect the American with the European longitudes, and thus to practically reduce the two independent series of determinations into one complete system.