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Concept
Benjamin Apthorp Gould
Summary
Benjamin Apthorp Gould (September 27, 1824 – November 26, 1896) was a pioneering American astronomer. He is noted for creating the Astronomical Journal, discovering the Gould Belt, and for founding of the Argentine National Observatory and the Argentine National Weather Service.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Lucretia Dana (Goddard) and Benjamin Apthorp Gould, the principal of Boston Latin School, which the younger Gould attended. The poet Hannah Flagg Gould was his aunt. After going on to Harvard College and graduating in 1844, he studied mathematics and astronomy under C. F. Gauss at Göttingen, Germany, during which time he published approximately 20 papers on the observation and motion of comets and asteroids. 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, the Astronomische Nachrichten.
Gould returned to America in 1848 and from 1852 to 1867 worked in the United States Coast Survey, where he worked in geodetic astronomy and was in charge of the longitude department. He developed and organized the service, was one of the first to determine longitudes by telegraphic means, and employed the Atlantic cable in 1866 to establish accurate longitude-relations between Europe and America. One of his assistants and life-long mentee was Seth Carlo Chandler, who went on to discover the Chandler wobble.
After his return to Cambridge, Massachusetts, Gould started the Astronomical 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 the Dudley Observatory at Albany, 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.
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