ACADEMY OP SCIENCES] BIOGRAPHY 3 



coveries to Doctor Swift, but this astronomer did not distribute the information. Speaking of 

 this omission Mr. Barnard has said: "Whether he thought that I was trying to form a comet 

 trust or had suddenly gone demented has never been clear to me." These comets were undoubt- 

 edly real, and fragments of the great comet. Schmidt, of Athens, reported one such object 

 which he observed on October 8, another was observed by E. Hartwig on October 9, and still 

 another by Brooks, of Phelps, N. Y., on October 21. They were never separately announced 

 in the list of comets. 



During this time young Barnard was working in the studio by day for a livelihood and 

 studying, by himself or with a tutor, on cloudy and moonlit nights. In 1880 he planned to 

 write a booklet on Mars, and solicited subscriptions from friends in Nashville to cover the 

 cost of printing. We have been unable to find a copy of this, which was planned to be a duo- 

 decimo; and it is doubtful whether it was ever actually printed. Three years later we find the 

 young amateur conducting an astronomical column in a journal known as the Artisan, which 

 was published twice every month at Nashville. In the same year friends who had perceived 

 the genius of the young man offered him a fellowship in Vanderbilt University at Nashville, 

 giving him an opportunity to devote his time exclusively to his studies and to make use of the 

 6-inch equatorial of the small observatory of the university. The stipend was only about 

 $300, together with a house on the university campus near the observatory, and it was a venture- 

 some step for a young man with a wife and a mother dependent upon him to give up his work 

 at the studio and endeavor to live on the sum provided. But his wife bravely counseled accept- 

 ance of the offer, and said, "We will get along somehow"; and they did. Barnard became 

 enrolled as a special student in the school of mathematics, at the same time having the care of 

 the observatory. Later he received an appointment as instructor in practical astronomy, 

 continuing his studies in mathematics, physics, and chemistry and some of the modern languages. 

 The young astronomer's first trip into the outer world was made in 1884, when he attended 

 the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at Philadelphia, visit- 

 ing en route the observatories at Cincinnati, Allegheny, Washington, Cambridge (Harvard), 

 Albany, and Princeton, and seeing for the first time those cities, together with New York and 

 Boston. Every economy had to be practiced, and he was accustomed to avoid unnecessary hotel 

 bills by traveling in day coaches at night. His record of this trip, in daily postal cards and letters 

 to his wife and his mother, is very humorous and interesting. He had formed in advance, mental 

 pictures of the prominent contemporary astronomers, and many of them turned out to be quite 

 different from his. anticipations. Thus, he had expected that Prof. E. C. Pickering would be a 

 formal and distant dignitary, as might befit a native of Boston and the director of the Harvard 

 College Observatory. To his surprise, he found that " Prof essor Pickering is comparatively a 

 young man, and strongly resembles a simple countryman. Had anyone shown him to me on 

 the street and told me that was the famous director of the Harvard College observatory, I should 

 not have taken his word on oath. I should have been positive there was a mistake. How- 

 ever, he is the most unassuming man that you -can imagine, and I admired him very much, 

 indeed." 



At this meeting in Philadelphia, he received a most friendly welcome and recognition from 

 the astronomers whom he had at last met in person, and could henceforth feel that he was one 

 of the fraternity. 



In 1887, at the age of 30, he' graduated from the school of mathematics at Vanderbilt. Mean- 

 while, he had discovered seven more comets — the last on May 12, 1887 — namely, 1884 II, 1885 

 II, 1886 II, 1886 IX, 1886 VIII, 1887 III, 1887 IV. Of these comets, 1884 II was periodic, with 

 a return expected every 5.4 years, but it escaped detection in subsequent years. In 1887 he 

 published in the Astronomische Nachrichten a parabolic orbit for Comet 1887 III. 



In 1883 he had independently discovered the Gegenschein, while sweeping the skies, and 

 had become extraordinarily familiar with the objects in the sky which could be seen with a 

 small telescope. He had given special attention to the planet Jupiter and was an independent 

 discoverer of the great red spot, as he was unaware that its presence had been announced 

 some months previously, in July, 1878, by C. W. Pritchett, of Glasgow, Mo. Barnard was a 



