156 BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD— COMSTOCK. [Memoiesnational 



the inspiring influence of Benjamin Peirce, he pursued during the entire four years of his college 

 course. This increasing interest in mathematics and physical science finds reflection in a dis- 

 sertation, of his senior year, upon the publications of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. One or more of these volumes seem to have fallen into his hands and to have 

 greatly impressed him. 



His student life appears to have been a normal one, in accordance with the standards of the 

 time. Tales of his precocious attainments, such as his translation of an ode of Horace at the 

 tender age of 5 years and his freshman attempt at computing a comet orbit, are fairly enough 

 offset by his ignominious failure at the blackboard when Peirce endeavored to exhibit his attain- 

 ments before a visiting committee of dignitaries, and by the matter of record, that the college 

 administration rusticated him for a considerable term because of his relation to some student 

 pranks. The personal relations and friendships formed during this period were an abiding 

 influence and joy throughout his later life. By parental arrangement his freshman chum was 

 Francis Parkman, the future historian. He became corresponding secretary of the Harvard 

 Natural History Society and, odd as it now seems, was appointed its curator for botany, 

 mineralogy, and conchology. His interest in the biological sciences appears to have been strongly 

 aroused for, as he long aftenvard told a friend who commented upon his unexpected knowledge 

 of trees, "I narrowly escaped being a botanist instead of an astronomer." A major influence 

 at this period was exerted by a local preacher who aroused or confirmed in him a strong moral 

 and ethical conviction that abided through life and one phase of which found expression in 

 his enthusiastic adherence to the Unitarian Church. 



Gould was graduated from Harvard in 1S44 and the immediate sequel to his college days 

 was quite conventional; he became a teacher in the Boston Latin School and proceeded to 

 an A. M. degree in course. But a single year sufficed to convince the young man that his purposes 

 in life were not to be realized along these temporary lines of least resistance. He had found 

 himself, and with clear vision and single purpose he turned toward preparation for a career 

 in which the developement of science in his native land was a dominant purpose, a purpose 

 that later found repeated expression in speech and print. A decade afterwards he records 

 that in arranging his plans he had sought and received advice from Sears C. Walker, and with 

 strong emphasis he approves the advice thus given to " study foreign languages, for thus alone 

 can you keep pace with the progress of modern science. " 



To his contemporaries the plans then formed must have seemed Quixotic, for, to quote 

 Gould himself, " I believe I may say that a single instance of a man's devoting himself to science 

 as the only earthly aim and object of his life, while unassured of a professor's chair or some 

 analogous appointment upon which he might depend for subsistence, was wholly unknown." 

 Despite this lack of precedents for his chosen career Gould appears to have acted wisely and well. 

 In July, 1845, he sailed for Europe with plans for a prolonged period of study and travel. His 

 family connections furnished him credentials and introductions that opened wide the doors of 

 scientific circles in the Old World. After brief periods spent under the influence of Airy at Green- 

 wich and of Arago and Biot at Paris, he passed on to Germany, in whose academic life he seems 

 to have found his chief inspiration, and this mainly in two institutions. He spent a year at 

 Berlin registered as an assistant in the observatory at the time when Galle's visual discovery 

 of Neptune, made through its modest telescope, thrilled a multitude of minds less ardent than 

 his own. During this residence in Berlin it was his great good fortune to win the friendship 

 and esteem of the venerable Alexander von Humboldt, then at the height of his fame and 

 influence. Through the benevolent exercise of this influence Gould was transferred to a new 

 environment and came into new relations that were to be decisive for his career. Prof. Carl 

 Friederich Gauss, one of the great mathematical astronomers of all times, received the young 

 man into his own inner circle of disciples, indeed into his' own home at Goettingen, and filled 

 his mind with enthusiasm for the problems of planetary motion then current. The first fruits 

 of this enthusiasm are to be found in a series of some 20 papers published in rapid succession 

 during the years 1848-1851 (see bibliography), dealing with the observation and motion of 



