cfa history

The Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College are an institutional research journal published in 120 volumes from 1855 until 1954. In the earliest years of the HCO, ongoing research vastly outpaced the financial requirements of publication. Founding Director William Cranch Bond and his son, George Phillips Bond, spent years preparing copy for an …

On February 4, 1921, Solon Bailey penned a letter in confirmation of the recent acquisition of two curious objects into the Harvard College Observatory collections. “My dear Mr. Bond,” he wrote, “the plaster casts of Professor William C. Bond and his father, William Bond, are received. The Observatory will care for these casts or dispose …

On November 25, 1837, American sea captain, Thomas H. Sumner, departed Charleston, South Carolina on a ship bound for Greenlock, Scotland. While en route, he discovered a new methodology in celestial navigation, later eponymously titled, the “Sumner line” or the circle of equal altitude. On December 17th, after days of overcast skies and poor visibility, …

The John G. Wolbach Library at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics is a research library with large historical collections documenting the history of the Harvard College Observatory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and the history of astronomical study in the United States more broadly. Included in the library are non-circulating special collections materials which …

*With this blog series, we also hope to instigate meaningful conversations about our institution’s history. We therefore invite you to comment on our posts and share your thoughts with us. Franklin Edward Kameny decided at four-years-old that he was going to be a scientist. It was another year or two before he managed to narrow …

*With this blog series, we also hope to instigate meaningful conversations about our institution’s history. We therefore invite you to comment on our posts and share your thoughts with us. In the summer of 1938, James Baker and his wife Elizabeth traveled to Stockholm for the annual meeting of the International Astronomical Union. The trip, …

On July 25, 1944, German submarine U-862 torpedoed and sunk the S.S. Robin Goodfellow, a U.S. freighter en route from Cape Town, South Africa to New York. A nearby British motor merchant received the distress signal, but was unable to intervene. None of the eight officers, thirty-three crewmen, or twenty-eight armed guards on board survived. …