OP ARTS AND SCIENCES: MAY 30, 1865. 499 



George Phillips Bond, the worthy successor of his father, the 

 first director of the Cambridge Observatory, died, of consumption, on 

 the 17th of February last, a few months less than forty years old. 

 He was born at Dorchester, on the 20th of May, 1825, and was grad- 

 uated at Harvard University in the summer of 1845. He began to 

 make observations as early as the year 1842, at the temporary Obser- 

 vatory on Quincy Street, where he soon took the place of his deceased 

 brother, W. C. Bond, Jr., a young man of high promise as an astrono- 

 mer. After graduation, and upon the permanent establishment of the 

 Observatory, George Bond took the post of Assistant Observer, which 

 he held until 1859, when, upon the death of his lamented father, he 

 was called to succeed him as Director. Thus his whole life, even from 

 boyhood, was devoted to astronomical labors in connection with the 

 Observatory which the Bonds, father and son, have made illustrious. 

 Upon them devolved the heavy task of organizing the new establish- 

 ment, and of carrying it on with means in slender proportion to its 

 work. Suffice it to say, that the high position which the Observatory 

 took under the direction of the elder Bond "was maintained under the 

 younger. To its interests, and to scientific labors in connection with 

 his official duties, he gave himself, from first to last, with entire de- 

 votion. 



The most important of his scientific investigations are : — 



1. Those relating to the mathematical theory of some portions of 

 Astronomy, especially his papers on Cometary Calculations, and the 

 Method of Mechanical Quadratures (in which he anticipated a valuable 

 improvement afterwards given independently by Encke), and that on 

 the use of Equivalent Factors in the Method of Least Squares. To 

 this category belong in part his investigations upon Saturn's rings, 

 which form the first step towards the present state of the problems 

 connected with that system. 



2. The Reduction of the Observations made for the United States 

 Coast Survey Chronometric Expeditions between Cambridge and Liv- 

 erpool, effiiicted under his direction. Upon these depend the most 

 trustworthy American longitudes. 



3. The Observations of Zones of small Stars. He mainly prepared 

 the plan for observing and reducing these zones, and even graduated 

 the mica scales employed in them. He also made many of the obser- 

 vations, — the most of the published portion, and a large share of those 

 still in manuscript. 



