View source for Benjamin Apthorp Gould

{{Short description|American astronomer}}
{{redirect|Benjamin Gould|the Australian politician|Benjamin Gould (politician)}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2020}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name              = Benjamin Apthorp Gould
| image             = Benjamin Apthorp Gould (Harper's Engraving).jpg
| image_size        = 152px
| caption           = Benjamin Apthorp Gould
| birth_date        = {{birth date|1824|9|27}}
| birth_place       = [[Boston]], Massachusetts
| death_date        = {{death date and age|1896|11|26|1824|9|27}}
| death_place       = [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]]
| citizenship       =
| nationality       = American
| ethnicity         = 
| field             = [[Astronomy]]
| work_institutions = 
| alma_mater        = [[Harvard College]]
| doctoral_advisor  = 
| doctoral_students = 
| known_for         = [[Astronomical Journal]]<br/>[[Gould Belt]]<br/>[[Gould designation]]s
| author_abbrev_bot = 
| author_abbrev_zoo = 
| prizes            = [[James Craig Watson Medal]] {{small|1887}} <br/>[[Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society|Gold Medal of the RAS]] {{small|1883}}
| footnotes         = 
| signature         = Signature of Benjamin Apthorp Gould.png
| spouse            = Mary Apthorp Quincy Gould 
}}
'''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]].

==Biography==
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.<ref>{{cite book |title=The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers |last=Hockey |first=Thomas |year=2009 |publisher=[[Springer Publishing]] |isbn=978-0-387-31022-0 |accessdate=August 22, 2012 |url=http://www.springerreference.com/docs/html/chapterdbid/58537.html}}</ref> 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 [[comet]]s and [[asteroid]]s.  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 and Geodetic Survey|United States Coast Survey]], where he worked in [[geodetic astronomy]] and was in charge of the [[longitude]] department.<ref name="The Harvard Crimson">{{cite web | title=Obituary: Benjamin Apthorp Gould, 1843. - News | website=The Harvard Crimson | url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1896/11/28/obituary-professor-benjamin-apthorp-gould-the/ | access-date=2021-06-28 |date=1896-11-28}}</ref> He developed and organized the service, was one of the first to [[longitude determination|determine longitudes]] by telegraphic means, and employed the Atlantic cable in 1866 to establish [[Valentia Island|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. In 1861 he undertook the enormous task of preparing for publication the records of astronomical observations made at the [[United 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 the [[American Philosophical Society]].<ref>{{Cite web|title=APS Member History|url=https://search.amphilsoc.org/memhist/search?creator=&title=&subject=&subdiv=&mem=&year=1851&year-max=1851&dead=&keyword=&smode=advanced|access-date=2021-04-14|website=search.amphilsoc.org}}</ref>

In 1864 he was admitted to the Massachusetts [[Society of the Cincinnati]] to represent his grandfather Captain Benjamin Gould.  In the 1890s he became an early member of the Massachusetts Society of the [[Sons of the American Revolution]].

Appointed in 1862 actuary to the [[United States Sanitary Commission]], he issued in 1869 an important volume of ''[https://archive.org/details/investigationsi00goulgoog/page/n12/mode/2up Investigations 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.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schwalm |first1=Leslie A. |title=Medicine, Science and Making Race in Civil War America |date=2023 |publisher=U of North Carolina Press |page=150}}</ref>  In 1864 he fitted up a private observatory at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and undertook in 1868, on behalf of the [[Argentina|Argentine republic]], to organize a national observatory at [[Córdoba, Argentina|Córdoba]]. In 1871 he became the first director of the Argentine National Observatory (today, [[Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba]] of the [[National University of Córdoba]]). While there, he and four assistants (including [[Miles Rock]]) extensively mapped the southern hemisphere skies using newly developed photometric methods. On June 1, 1884, he made the last definite sighting of the [[Great 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 of [[Lewis Morris Rutherfurd|L. M. Rutherfurd]]'s photographs of the [[Pleiades]] 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 southern [[star cluster]]s, the reduction of which occupied the closing years of his life. He remained in [[Argentina]] until 1885, when he returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He received the [[Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society]] in 1883 and the [[James Craig Watson Medal]] in 1887. Astronomers continue to investigate the astrophysics of a large scale feature of the [[Milky Way]] to which he called their attention in 1877, and honor him with its name, [[Gould Belt|The Gould Belt]]. A [[Impact crater|crater]] on the [[Moon]] is named after him.  Gould was elected a member of the [[American Antiquarian Society]] in 1892.<ref>[https://www.americanantiquarian.org/memberlistg American Antiquarian Society Members Directory]</ref>  He died at [[Cambridge, Massachusetts]] in 1896.

===Uranography===
In 1874, while in Argentina with his assistants, Gould completed his greatest work, the ''Uranometria Argentina'', consisting of an atlas published in 1877 and catalog in 1879, for which he received in 1883 the gold medal of the [[Royal 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.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Benjamin Apthorp Gould and the Uranometria Argentina|website=Star Tales|url= http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/gould.html|access-date=2023-01-10}}</ref> The catalog assigned [[Gould designation]]s to all bright stars within 100 degrees of the [[south celestial pole]] in a manner similar to what [[Flamsteed]] 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 at [https://web.archive.org/web/20120227032716/http://www.uranometriaargentina.com/ www.uranometriaargentina.com/].  

Gould followed his ''Uranometria Argentina'' with a zone-catalogue of 73,160 stars (1884), and a general catalogue (1885) compiled from meridian observations of 32,448 stars.

==Personal life==
[[Alice Bache Gould]] (1868–1953), a mathematician, philanthropist, and historian, was one of his five children.<ref>{{MacTutor|title=Alice Bache Gould|id=Gould}}</ref>

==See also==
*[[Gould Belt]]
*[[Gould Belt Survey]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*{{Cite Appletons'|wstitle=Gould, Benjamin|year=1900 |short=x |notaref=x}}
*{{Cite EB1911|wstitle=Gould, Benjamin Apthorp |short=x}}
*[http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/gould-benjamin.pdf National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir]
*[http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/gould.html Benjamin Apthorp Gould and the Uranometria Argentina]
*[https://nwda.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv38848 Benjamin A. Gould Collection]
* [http://digitalcollections.ucsc.edu/cdm/search/collection/p265101coll10/searchterm/Benjamin%20A.%20Gould/order/title Portraits of Benjamin A. Gould from the Lick Observatory Records Digital Archive, UC Santa Cruz Library's Digital Collections]{{Dead link|date=May 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}

{{Presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gould, Benjamin Apthorp}}
[[Category:1824 births]]
[[Category:1896 deaths]]
[[Category:American astronomers]]
[[Category:American emigrants to Argentina]]
[[Category:Foreign members of the Royal Society]]
[[Category:Gould Belt]]
[[Category:Harvard College alumni]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society]]
[[Category:United States Sanitary Commission people]]
[[Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class)]]
[[Category:The Astronomical Journal editors]]
[[Category:United States Coast Survey personnel]]
[[Category:Members of the American Philosophical Society]]
[[Category:Presidents of the American Association for the Advancement of Science]]