SKETCH OF PROFESSOR R. A. GOULD. 685 



Council assembled, and Dr. Gould was surrounded by Bache and 

 Henry and Peirce and the rest, his loyal assistants found their chief 

 still easily first in wit and learning among the brilliant band. Scat- 

 tered now in the church, the naval service, college, and business, they 

 look back with affection to those days as among the happiest of their 

 lives, and with gratitude to him whose overwhelming anxieties never 

 relaxed his efforts to make them so. 



Dr. Gould's " Catalogue of Fundamental Stars " has been used up 

 to a recent date, not only for the calculation of the ephemerides in the 

 " Nautical Almanac," but also as a basis for all observations made in 

 this country. 



In view of the special value of ancient observations, Dr. Gould 

 undertook to reduce and to publish all those which had been made at 

 Paris by D'Agelet between 1782 and 1785. He has also reduced all 

 the zone observations made at Washington from 1846 to 1852, in both 

 these cases rendering great service to the cause of science. 



The southern heavens being almost unexplored, and offering a 

 vast field for investigation, Dr. Gould, in entire devotion to the in- 

 terests of science, and setting aside all personal considerations, unhesi- 

 tatingly responded to a call from the Argentine Republic. Thanks 

 to his personal qualities and his scientific capacity, he soon acquh-ed 

 the complete confidence of the Government, under whose auspices he 

 founded at Cordoba, between 1870 and 1872, an observatory equipped 

 with the most admirable instruments. Here Dr. Gould, being quite 

 independent, and no longer obliged to divide his energies among many 

 different interests, has undertaken a series of great works of remark- 

 able value. He has just published his new " Uranometry of the South- 

 ern Heavens," including all stars visible to the naked eye, the magni- 

 tude of each star being determined by not less than four independent 

 observations. In the course of these researches he has found as many 

 variable stars visible to the. naked eye as have been discovered to this 

 day in the northern heavens. Other labors under these favorable condi- 

 tions and based on scientific principles have been devoted to the refor- 

 mation of the boundaries and notations of the constellations. His Ura- 

 nometry is as final an authority for the southern hemisphere as that of 

 Argelander for the northern. From the results obtained by Arge- 

 lander and Heis, combined with his own observations, Dr. Gould has 

 deduced a formula according to which the number of stars increases 

 in proportion to the diminution of their luster, and he has sug- 

 gested that our solar system is not part of the milky way, but of 

 a stellar system to which about four hundred of the brighest fixed 

 stars also belong, and which bisects the milky way at an angle of 

 about 20. 



It is well known that the object of the zone observations made by 

 Bessel and Argelander was to determine the positions of stars from 

 the first to the ninth magnitude, between 3 and 80 in the northern 



