Memorial Address — Truman Henry S afford. 621 



the nTimber of rods around his father's large meadow he could 

 tell the measure in barley corns, and when he was told that it 

 was 1,040, he computed the result, 617,760, mentally in a few 

 minutes. Before he was ten years old he had computed a table 

 of logarithms of numbers from 1 to 60 from the formula given 

 in Hutton's mathematics, and had cx^nstructed an almanac which 

 was published. Before he was eleven he had constructed four 

 more almanacs. It is related that on one occasion when he was 

 about ten years old he performed the astonishing feat of finding 

 the square of 365,365,365,365,365, giving the correct result, a 

 number with thirty-six figures, in about one minute. This 

 power of reckoning with large numbers and of discerning the 

 divisors of large numbers he possessed to some extent throughout 

 his life, but it was not nearly so marked in his later years. 



He entered Har\^ard University at an early age and was grad- 

 uated in 1854 at tbe age of 18, after having enjoyed the in- 

 struction of Benjamin Peirce, one of the foremost American 

 mathematicians. After his graduation he remained for some 

 years at Harvard as observer in the Harvard College Observa- 

 tory under Professor Bond. In 1865 he came to Chicago as di- 

 rector of the old Dearborn Observatory, which position he held 

 until the great fire of 1871 by which the observatory was de- 

 stroyed. The people of the great city by the lake were too busy 

 repairing the damage wrought by the fire to feel the need of a 

 new observatory so the young astronomer had to seek employ- 

 ment in other fields. He found it in Wheeler's astronomical 

 survey in the far west, and through this work became connected 

 with various scientific bureaus at Washington. In 1876 he was 

 made professor of Astronomy at Williams College, in which 

 work he continued till his death June 12, 1901. 



Professor Safford's real scientific work began in 1866 at Chi- 

 cago, when he undertook the observation of one of the zones of 

 the Astronomische Gesellschaft. This work was cut short, how- 

 ever, by the great fire of 1871. During the years between the 

 great fire and his call to Williams College he seems to have 

 been engaged principally in routine work, of which computa- 

 tion formed the greater part. While at Williamstown he took 

 up the work of discussing the stars most suitable for the deter- 



