Gould, Benjamin Apthorp

Born Boston, Massachusetts, USA, 27 September 1824

Died Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 26 November 1896

Benjamin Apthorp Gould founded the Astronomical Journal , copioneered with Lewis Rutherfurd the application of photography to astrometry (the determination of the positions of the stars and planets), headed the effort to use the first successful transatlantic telegraph cable to determine the longitude difference between Boston and Liverpool, and created the first comprehensive catalogs of Southern Hemisphere stars. Along the way, Gould was the first director of the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York, one of the original members of the National Academy of Sciences established by the US Congress in 1863, and a founder and first director of the National Observatory at Córdoba, Argentina.

The eldest of four children born to Benjamin Apthorp Gould, Sr. and Lucretia Dana Goddard, Gould was precocious, reading aloud by age three, composing Latin odes by age