514 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Thus, at the advanced age of eighty-five, peacefully and beautifully 

 closed the life of one whose labors in behalf of education, science, and 

 social advancement have been inwoven in the history of more than two 

 generations, and will long cause his name to be honored and gratefully 

 remembered. 



Last year five distinguished names disappeared from our list of for- 

 eign honorary members. During the year now closed we have lost 

 only one. 



Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struye, one of the great astrono- 

 mers of the age, died at Pulcova on the 23d of November last. He 

 was born at Altona in 1793, and was the son of Jacob Struve, a scholar 

 of high reputation, especially as a philologist. He emigrated to Russia 

 at the age of fifteen, and was educated at the University of Dorpat, 

 where he became Professor of Astronomy at the early age of twenty, 

 and began at once his astronomical observations. These were contin- 

 ued, with few interruptions (caused mostly by geodetical work and sci- 

 entific journeys), until the year 1839, when he was called to the charge 

 of the Imperial Observatory at Pulcova, an institution in some respects 

 the first in the world. He retained the directorship of this celebrated 

 establishment until the year 1861, when, under the weight of advan- 

 cing years and infirmities, he resigned it to his son, at the close of a 

 half-century of labors of great importance to science and to his adopted 

 country. 



In the first place, Struve had no superior among his compeers as an 

 astronomical observer. Even Bessel must yield to him the palm for 

 nicety of work in detail, while in Struve's early volumes of observa- 

 tions the influence of Bessel's great mind is plainly seen. The first 

 three volumes of the " Observationes Dorpatenses " are chiefly occupied 

 with those made with Dollond's transit instrument, and, partly unre- 

 duced as they are, they are still indispensable in all researches relating 

 to stars near the pole. Struve's remaining observations at Dorpat are 

 brought into the shape of fully discussed results in his two great works, 

 " Stellarum Duplicium Mensuros Micrometricse," and " Stellarum Fixa- 

 rum imprimis Duplicium et Multiplicium Positiones Medias." These 

 almost exhaust the subject of double stars for the years about 1830, 

 and ai-e of the highest historical importance for future astronomy. 



The Pulcova observations, of which about fifty thousand have been 

 made by the meridian instruments alone, are now in process of publi- 

 cation. It has been thought well that their results should appear to- 



