Abstract
In July, 1876, the person who would prove success possible arrived. Lewis Boss gazed upon an observatory building in disuse and disrepair. Yet he found its jewel, the Olcott Meridian Circle, to be undamaged. The Dudley still had a tool with which world class astronomical research could be done. But was Lewis Boss, who had never earned a degree in astronomy or worked at an observatory, the person to do it?
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References
U.S. Department of State, 1878, Report Upon the Survey of the Boundary, Washington, GPO, p. 282; Richard Tucker to Mother, 21 Dec 1879, MLSA
Newcomb, Simon, 1903, Reminiscences of an Astronomer, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, p. 129
U.S. Department of State, 1878, Report Upon the Survey of the Boundary, Washington, GPO, p. 411
Dudley Observatory, Minute Book of the Board of Trustees, May 12, 1876
Annual General Meeting, 1905, MNRAS, 65, 321
Bessel, F.W.,in Populare Vorlesunger uber wissenschaftliche Gegenstande, H. C. Schumacher (ed), Hamburg, 1848, p. 342, as quoted by Hermann, Dieter, B. 1984 The History ofAstronomy from Herschel to Hertzesprung,Cambridge, Cambridge U., p. 35)
Boss, Lewis, 1890, Positions of 465 Comparison-Stars Determined at Albany A.J. 10, 75
Tucker, Richard H. Lewis Boss, Popular Astronomy 20, 581–594, (1913)
Annual Report of the Astronomer for 1877, Albany,Weed Parsons, 1878,2
Boss, Lewis, 1877 Declinations of Fixed Stars Washington, D.C., U.S. Northern Boundary Commission, 1877, Appendix H of the Report of the Chief Astronomer
Brief sketches of these and other late 19th Century Albany notables are in Kennedy, William, 1983, O, Albany N.Y,Penguin,, pp. 97–101
Minute Book; Board of Trustees Meeting, Feb 14, 1878
Annual Report of the Astronomer for 1877, p.4
These and the quotes from the succeeding paragraphs are taken from the letters Richard Tucker wrote to his mother from the Dudley Observatory from Sept., 1879-Jan, 1880.
Bird, Mary, 1886, Popular Fallacies About Observatories, Sidereal Messenger 5: 265
Boss, Lewis, Catalogue of 8241 Stars Between 0 degrees 50 minutes and 5 degrees 10 minutes of north declination for the epoch 1875, Leipzig, Astronomische Gesellschaft, 1890
Turner, Herbert H, Address on presenting the Gold Medal of the Society to Professor Lewis Boss, MNRAS, 65 (1905), 412–425
Lewis Boss’s essay on “Comets, their Composition, Purpose and Effect on the earth,” submitted under the pseudonym Hipparchus III, won the Warner Comet Prize of $200, an 1881 competition sponsored by H.H. Warner of Rochester, N.Y. See History and Work of the Warner Observatory, 1887, Rochester, Democrat and Chronicle, p. 25
Tucker, Richard H. Completion of the Dudley Observatory, Pub. Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 5, 227 (1893)
New York Times, Oct. 19, 1884. I have relied on the reporting of the Times in compiling Albany’s political role in the 1884 election
The Industries of the City of Albany,1889, Albany, Elstner Publishing Company, p.131
Dudley Observatory, Sidereal Messenger, 7 (1888), 44
Boss, Lewis, The Dudley Observatory at Albany, 1912, unpubl. Manuscript, Box 2, Folder 5, DO Records, DOA
Dudley Observatory, Sidereal Messenger, 7 (1888), 44
Boss, Lewis, 1890. Systematic corrections of star-positions near the equator, AJ, 9: 17
Safford, Truman Henry, A note on the proper motion of Bradley’s stars, 1889 Sidereal Messenger, 8:166., and anon., 1887 Liverpool Astronomical Society Observatory, 10: 185
Krueger, A., 1891, Obituary notice of Prof. Schoenfeld, PASP, 3: 255–257
Annual Report of the Astronomer for 1889, Administrative Records, Box 1, Folder 1, DOA.
Boss, Lewis, 1891, A determination of the solar motion” AJ, 9: 161
Boss, Lewis, 1889, Proper-motions of stars in the Albany Zone, AJ 9: 57
The “tired of Albany” quote is in a letter from Boss to Newcomb, Oct. 17, 1890, in the Newcomb Correspondence, Box 16, Boss Folder, Newcomb Papers, Library of Congress, quoted in Plotkin, below. The letter to Tucker is Boss to Tucker, Oct. 5, 1890, MLSA
Boss to Tucker, October 20, 1892, MLSA. Newcomb to Boss, Feb. 28, 1891, Simon Newcomb Papers, quoted in Norberg, Arthur L., 1983, “Simon Newcomb’s Role in the Astronomical Revolution of the Early 1900s” in Sky with Ocean Joined, Washington, D.C., USNO, p. 81
The discussion that follows is based on Plotkin,, Howard 1878, Astronomers Versus the Navy, Proc. Am. Phil Soc., 122: 6, 385–399
Boss to F.W McNair, USN, Superintendent, 9 Jan 1891, Boss Correspondence, MLSA. Boss’s views are detailed in A Statement in Respect to the United States Naval Observatory and its Organization, Albany, Van Benthuysen, 1891
Trustees Minute Book, 28 Jan 1898. Benjamin Boss, History of the Dudley Observatory, p. 23
Pruyn, Huybertie, 1967, Memories of an Albany Girlhood, Albany, Ft. Orange, 1967,p. 111
Tucker, Richard H. 1913, Lewis Boss, Popular Astronomy 20: 583
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Wise, G. (2004). Disciplined Dreamer. In: Civic Astronomy. Astrophysics and Space Science Library, vol 316. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2678-2_4
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