RECENT PROGRESS IN ASTROPHYSICS IN THE UNITED 



STATES. 1 



[With S plates.] 



By J. Bosler, 

 Astronomer at the Observatory of Meudon, France. 



Americans during recent years have made great advances in astron- 

 omy. This science, with its broad horizons and its continued desire 

 for improvements and capital, comports well with the temperament 

 of a people so well endowed for vast undertakings and for all in any 

 way connected with mechanics. To get money for their researches 

 seems second nature, almost a pleasure, to American scientists; as 

 natural to them is the construction and employment of new instru- 

 ments. We were not astonished, therefore, some months since, on 

 the occasion of the International Conference at Mount Wilson, Gal., 

 in finding for ourselves that they had accomplished great things in 

 this class of undertakings, as well as in many others. It is but just 

 to add that the means placed at the disposal of the astronomers by 

 their many and generous friends were truly proportional to the uses 

 made of these means. What follows will at every step illustrate the 

 beneficent influence of private American initiative. 



HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY THE SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF THE STARS. 



One of the oldest of the scientific establishments in the United 

 States is the celebrated observatory of Harvard College, situated near 

 Cambridge (Mass.) , which, during the last quarter of a century, Prof. 

 E. C. Pickering, assisted by his brother, has greatly helped to make 

 illustrious. It is supported not by the State, but by Harvard Univer- 

 sity, an autonomous institution analogous to the English universities. 

 Situated in the center of New England, near Boston, this observatory 

 is assuredly the least American of all those of the United States ; you 

 will not find here those colossal instruments which are the pride of the 

 astronomer of the West ; here the methods are akin to our own, and 

 the qualities are the more especially European ones of order and 

 patience, from which so many beautiful results have followed. 



1 Translated, by permisssion, from Revue Generale des Sciences, Paris, 22d year, No. 3, 

 Feb. 15, 1911. 



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