356 BENJAMIN APTHORP GOULD. 



From this poiut Dr. Gould's life became one of incessant activity, im- 

 pressing its mark in many ways upon the intellectual life of the com- 

 munity ; but the line of intensest force naturally took the direction of 

 his own beloved science, to which he communicated an impulse not meas- 

 ured merely by what he accomplished for it by his direct investigations, 

 great as that is, but also by the force which always emanates from so 

 earnest a nature. He inspired a new breath into American astronomy. 

 The new atmosphere which he brought with him from Germany, where 

 he had caught the spirit of the great masters under whom he studied, 

 became gradually transfused upon this side the sea. His enthusiasm for 

 the introduction of better means and methods of research was caught 

 by his compatriots, their courage to regenerate our science was sustained, 

 and transmitted through various channels to the next and to the present 

 generation. Thus we may say without fear of being controverted that 

 American astronomy to-day is a different thing from what it would have 

 been without Gould's predominant influence, deep and quiet but strong, 

 to upbuild it and to free it from the clumsiness and imperfections which 

 still impede it, even in some of the otherwise most enlightened nations of 

 the world. It is under his leadership that American astronomy has 

 climbed to where it looks with steady and level eye uiDon that of Ger- 

 many, which occupies perhaps a larger, but not a loftier plane. 



Let us now glance at Dr. Gould's more prominent labors, passing by 

 his earlier important investigations in applied theoretical and in practical 

 astronomy, as well as his numerous and valuable coutributions to the 

 literature of science, education, and other departments of thought, which 

 we find scattered through the long range of his career. In 1852 he was 

 appointed to take charge of the longitude determinations of the Coast 

 Survey. He organized, developed, and extended this service, retiring in 

 1867. Meanwhile, in 1855, he became director of the Dudley Observa- 

 tory in Albany, equipped and organized the institution, and carried it on 

 without remuneration and at his private expense. He left it in 1859, 

 after a severe struggle to preserve the institution for purposes of scien- 

 tific investigation. 



In 1859 he published his discussion of the places and proper motions 

 of circumpolar stars, for use as standards in the Coast Survey. These, as 

 revised by him in 1861, together with his similar list of clock-stars, were 

 adopted as the standards for the American Ephemeris, and, as to the 

 circumpolars, remain in such use to this day. In 1866 he published his 

 reduction of D'Agelet's observations. About the same time he per- 

 formed a similar service for the greater part of the observations made at 



