152 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLIX. No. 1259 



ter known as astrophysics) was in its in- 

 fancy. It is cliaracteristic cf Pickering 

 that he realized at once in what direction 

 the greatest opportunities lay, and set to 

 work to employ the full resources of the 

 observatory in fundamentally important 

 work. Harvard had always been sympa- 

 thetically inclined towards the newer de- 

 velopments of astronomical science, and 

 considerable photometric work had been 

 done under Bond and "Winlock ; but, when 

 the new director began to devote the main 

 portion of his own time, and that of the 

 fifteen-inch telescope (then one of the great- 

 est in the country) to photometric re- 

 searches, considerable criticism was aroused. 

 "Why," said these critics, "should obser- 

 vations with the meridian circle and 

 micrometer, w'hich yield results accurate al- 

 most to one part in a million, be neglected 

 in favor of measures in which differences 

 of five, or even ten per cent. haJbitually 

 occur? Can such inaccurate observations 

 be of any value in an exact science ? ' ' 



Undaunted by these cavils, he continued 

 in his chosen course — ^with what abundant 

 reason the nearly eighty volumes of the 

 ' ' Harvard Annals ' ' which appeared during 

 his directorate may testify. The "old as- 

 tronomy" was not neglected — in fact, 

 twenty years' time was spent by several 

 members of the staif in preparing each of 

 the two Harvard zones of the Astronomisehe 

 Gesellschaf t 's scheme of international co- 

 operation in star-cataloguing — ^but the as- 

 trophj'^ical work accomplished under Pick- 

 ering's directorship, and bearing the marks 

 of his genius, is of incomparably greater 

 volume and importance. He was a pioneer 

 in several fields, in each of which he has had 

 many followers. 



He was never contented with the un- 

 thinking adoption of the methods and in- 

 struments of investigation which he found 

 in use, but was always designing new ones, 



with a view to increasing the accuracy of 

 observation, and, above all, to obtaining 

 rapidity without sacrificing accuracy. In 

 the latter particular he was indeed a master. 

 He possessed a genius for organization 

 which would undoubtedly have brought him 

 both wealth and fame in the world of busi- 

 ^ness : but he preferred to devote these tal- 

 ents to the service of science, and, because 

 of them, enjoyed work of a sort which most 

 other men would have regarded as drudg- 

 ery. He once said to the writer, "I like 

 to undertake large pieces of routine work." 

 In the great masses of such work done 

 under his direction, the principles of 

 "scientific management" were fully ap- 

 plied. All that could be done by assistants 

 of moderate capacity was left to them, and 

 the whole working time of the experienced 

 specialists was devoted to such parts of the 

 work as they alone could do. To extend the 

 study to the stars of the southern hemis- 

 phere, a station was established at Are- 

 quipa, Peru, in 1890, and has been- actively 

 maintained ever since, and another has 

 more recently been set up in the island of 

 Jamaica. 



The results of these carefully reasoned 

 plans have been so extensive that only the 

 principal features can be mentioned here, 

 leaving a host of minor but liighlj^ interest- 

 ing investigations undescribed. 



In visual photometry, Pickering started 

 alm^ost de novo, devising new measuring in- 

 struments, with which observations of all 

 the accuracy necessary for his purpose 

 could be made with great rapidity — notably 

 the meridian photometers, with which the 

 brightness of stars is measured, as they 

 cross the meridian, by comparison with 

 some circumpolar star which is alwayis avail- 

 able as a standard. With these instru- 

 ments more than 45,000 stars have been ob- 

 served at Cambridge and Arequipa, and 

 the resulting system of visual stellar magni- 



