90 ASPECTS OF AMERICAN ASTRONOMY. 



American astronomers must always honor tlie names of EitteuTiouse 

 and Bowditch. And yet in one respect their work was disappointing 

 of results. Neither of them was the founder of a school. Rittenbouse 

 left no successor to carry on his work. The help which Bowditch 

 afforded his generation was invaluable to isolated students who, here 

 and there, dived alone and unaided into the mysteries of the celestial 

 motions. His work was not mainly in the field of observational astron- 

 omy, and therefore did not materially influence that branch of science. 

 In 1832 Professor Airy, afterwards astronomer royal of England, made a 

 report to the British Association on the condition of practical astronomy 

 in various countries. In this report he remarked that lie was unable to 

 say anything about American astronomy because, so far as he knew, 

 no public observatory existed in the United States. 



William 0. Bond, afterwards famous as the first director of Harvard 

 Observatory, was at that time making observations with a small tele- 

 scope, first near Boston and afterwards at Cambridge. But with so 

 meager an outfit his establishment could scarcely lay claim to being 

 an astronomical observatory, and it was not surprising if Airy did not 

 know anything of his modest efforts. 



If at this time Professor Airy had extended his investigations into 

 yet another field, with a view of determining the prospects for a great 

 city at the site of Fort Dearborn, on the southern shore of Lake 

 Michigan, he would have seen as little prospect of civic growth in that 

 region as of a great development of astronomy in the United States at 

 large. A plat of the proposed town of Chicago had been xjrepared 

 two years before, when the place contained perhaps half a dozen fami- 

 lies. In the same month in which Professor Airy made his report, 

 August, 1832, the people of the place, then numbering 28 voters, 

 decided to become incorporated, and selected five trustees to carry on 

 their government. 



In 1837 a city charter was obtained from the legislature of Illinois. 

 The growth of this infant city, then small even for an infant, into the 

 great commercial metropolis of the West has been the just pride of 

 its people and the wonder of the world. I mention it now because of 

 a remarkable coincidence. With this civic growth has quietly gone on 

 another, little noted by the great world, and yet in its way equally 

 wonderful and equally gratifying to the pride of those who measure 

 greatness by intellectual progress. If it be true that — 



In Nature nothing is great but man; in man nothing is great hut mind — 



then may knowledge of the universe be regarded as the true measure 

 of progress. I therefore invite attention to the fact that American 

 astronomy began with your city and has slowly but surely kept pace 

 with it until to-day our country stands second only to Germany in the 

 number of researches being x^rosecuted and second to none in the num- 

 ber of men who have gained the highest recognition by their labors. 

 In 1836 Prof. Albert Hopkins, of Williams College, and Prof. Elias 



