354 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 297. 



ical observations made with instruments of 

 his own construction. His father, who was 

 a paymaster in the navy, served with dis- 

 tinction in the civil war, and was on board 

 the Monitor during her memorable fight 

 with the Merrimac. Keeler's qualifications 

 for scientific work clearly showed them- 

 selves at the Johns Hopkins University, 

 where he took an undergraduate course, and 

 served as assistant to Professor Hastings, 

 with whom he observed the total solar 

 eclipse of 1878 in Colorado. His report on 

 the eclipse, which is accompanied by a 

 drawing of the corona, is a characteristic- 

 ally clear and concise paper. 



Shortly after this he was appointed assist- 

 ant at the Allegheny Observatory, where he 

 had an important part in the long" series 

 of bolometric investigations carried on by 

 Professor Langley, then Director of the 

 Observatory. In July, 1881, he was a 

 member of Professor Langley's well-known 

 expedition to Mount Whitney, in South- 

 ern California, where an extensive re- 

 gion in the extreme infra-red of the solar 

 spectrum was discovered with the bolom- 

 eter. * Later he studied for two years in 

 Berlin and Heidelberg under Helmholtz and 

 Quincke, and returned to the Allegheny 

 Observatory, where he remained until ap- 

 pointed a member of the staff of the Lick 

 Observatory. His work on Mt. Hamilton 

 commenced in 1886, and for some time he 

 was the only astronomer at the Observatory, 

 which was still in process of construction. 

 In May, 1891, he was elected Professor of 

 Astrophysics in the "Western University of 

 Pennsylvania and Director of the Allegheny 

 Observatory. In June of the same year he 

 married Miss Matthews, a niece of Captain 

 Floyd, President of the Lick Trust, with 

 whose family she had lived on Mt. Hamilton. 



Keeler's work at the Lick Observatory, 

 of which more will be said in what follows, 



*A peak in the Mt. Whitney range was named 

 'Keeler's Needle.' 



was continued in a most effective manner 

 with the modest instrumental resources at 

 Allegheny. His work here might well 

 serve as an object lesson to those who com- 

 plain of their inability to obtain useful re- 

 sults because they do not happen to have 

 instruments of the largest size at their dis- 

 posal. With a full understanding of the 

 art of making the most of his means, he 

 took up photography for the first time, made 

 himself thoroughly familiar with photo- 

 graphic processes, and then, with the aid of 

 a spectrograph whose general design has 

 been followed in the construction of the 

 great modern spectrographs at Mt. Hamil- 

 ton, Potsdam, Pulkowa and Williams Bay, 

 he obtained the photographs of the spectra 

 of red stars which excited so much interest 

 at the dedication of the Yerkes Observatory. 

 He also made an admirable series of draw- 

 ings of Mars, which was published in the 

 Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society. 

 In 1893 he accompanied the writer on an 

 astrophysical expedition to Pike's Peak, 

 where his experience and assistance were 

 invaluable. In the same year, in company 

 with Pi'ofessors Crew and Ames, he joined 

 me in editing the astrophysical part of As- 

 tronomy and Astrophysics. The Astro-physical 

 Journal was established in 1895, and Keeler 

 became joint editor with myself of the new 

 publication. Until his return to Mt. Ham- 

 ilton in 1898, where distance prevented him 

 from taking an active part in the editorial 

 work, he gave much time to the Journal, 

 which owes much to his labors. 



Keeler's spectroscopic proof of the mete- 

 oric constitution of Saturn's rings was made 

 at Allegheny in the spring of 1895. In 

 October, 1895, at the writer's request, he 

 made at Cambridgeport the tests of the 40- 

 inch object-glass of the Yerkes telescope 

 which led to its final acceptance. Two 

 years later, at the dedication of the Yerkes 

 Observatory, he delivered an excellent ad- 

 dress ' On the Importance of Astrophysical 



