Abstract
In early 1849, the U. S. Navy was making feverish preparations for a bold expedition to Chile. A Congressional appropriation had been secured, and hopes were high that the expedition would help solve one of the main problems in astronomy—determining the distance from the Earth to the Sun, today known as the astronomical unit. This chapter covers the preparations and results of the expedition, and places it in the context of the history of science, with glimpses of how the expedition sheds light on the early relations between the United States and Chile. The expedition is a particularly robust example of how science and culture interact, not only in carrying out international expeditions, but also as embodied in the six volumes Gilliss published detailing the geography, climate, meteorology, mineral and agricultural resources, and culture of Chile, one of the earliest descriptions of the newly formed country.
Address given in March 2016 at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Chile, published here for the first time.
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References
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Dick, S.J. (2020). The U. S. Naval Astronomical Expedition of James Melville Gilliss in the Southern Hemisphere, 1849–1852. In: Space, Time, and Aliens. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41614-0_27
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41614-0_27
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