Samuel Pierpont Langley, Secretary to the Smithsonian 
Institution, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of 
Edinburgh, 1902-6. By Dr W. Peddie. 
Through the death of Samuel Pierpont Langley this Society has 
lost one of the most eminent of its distinguished Foreign Members, 
and Science has lost one of the great leaders who have placed 
America in the front rank of the nations which concern them- 
selves with the advancement of knowledge. The announcement 
of his death came as a surprise ; for, although he had passed the 
threescore-and-ten limit, his powers for work were so entirely 
untouched as to justify the hope that many years of useful labour 
still lay before him. The work which he actually performed was 
so colossal, and some of it so recent, that years may necessarily 
pass before all its results are fully made public. 
Born at Roxbury, in Massachusetts, on the 22nd day of 
August 1834, Langley received his general education at Boston 
High School. Leaving the school in 1851, he took up the study 
of civil engineering and architecture, and subsequently practised 
these professions until he had succeeded in acquiring means 
which made him independent of routine work. From that time 
onwards his employments coincided more fully with his mental 
inclinations. 
Astronomy had attracted him powerfully since the days of his 
childhood; so the years 1864 and 1865 found Langley visiting 
the chief observatories of Europe, and making acquaintance with 
its scientific societies, many of which were in subsequent years to 
bestow upon him their highest honours. 
In 1865 he became assistant astronomer at Harvard College 
Observatory. In 1866 he was appointed assistant professor of 
mathematics at the United States Naval Academy. In 1867 he 
became director of the Alleghany Observatory at Pittsburg, a post 
which, along with the professorship of astronomy and physics 
at Pennsylvania, he held until, in 1887, he was appointed 
