George Phillips Bond was the second director of Harvard College
observatory, being the successor of his father, Prof. W. C. Bond.
The date of his appointment was 1859. He was born in Dorchester,
Mass., May 20, 1825, and graduated at Harvard in 1845. Thenceforth
until his decease Feb. 17, 1865, he was in the constant service of
the observatory. Prior to his taking the chief office his labors as
assistant had gained for him a professional reputation; he had shared
with his father the heavy task of organizing the observatory and
carrying it on with slender means; he was familiar with its routine,
and both by academical and practical training was peculiarly qualified
for the position.
His professional record therefore is not to be limited to his own
term as director. The computations required in the preparation of the
three early volumes of the annals were to a great extent his work,
and those pertaining to the chronometric expeditions between Boston
and Liverpool, were wholly by him. He was the discoverer of the dark
interior ring of Saturn, one of the first revelations of the great
telescope, and discoverer also, as already stated, of ten comets within
a brief period of years. In this cometary work it was his practice to
sweep the whole visible heavens once every month.
His observations of Saturn led to the adoption of a new theory as to
the constitution of the rings. During his term systematic observations
were made of certain nebulæ, particularly that in Orion. He conducted a
series of zone observations of faint stars near the equator, prepared a
plan of observation and reduction, and with his own hand graduated the
mica scales used in the work.
In 1860 he made an investigation of the brightness of certain celestial
objects, including the moon and the planets, the results of which have
a special value but are not identified with the Harvard photometrical
series of later years, which relates to fixed stars only. During his
term the formation of a star catalogue was begun, the observations
being made with the meridian circle and in right ascension only, and
much progress was made in picturing celestial objects by the camera,
the process having, with the disuse of Daguerre’s particular method,
gained the generic name of photography.
The prestige of the beginning and early successes of astronomical
photography attaches to the administration of the senior Bond; but
his son shared fully in the labors of thought, contrivance and
manipulation by which the original experiments were conducted, and in
appreciation of the future possibilities to science in this new method
of observation.
One evidence of this appears in a paper read by the younger Mr. Bond
before the American Academy on May 12, 1857, the immediate occasion
for its presentation being a most significant discovery made at the
observatory a few days earlier.
The paper says: “Daguerreotype images of the star Vega were obtained at
the observatory of Harvard College on July 17, 1850, and subsequently
impressions were taken from the double star Castor, exhibiting an
elongated disc, but no separation of its two components.
“These were the first, and until very recently, the only known
instances of the application of photography to the delineation of fixed
stars. A serious difficulty was interposed to further progress by the
want of suitable apparatus for communicating uniform sidereal motion
to the telescope.
“This has been supplied by replacing the original clock of the
great equatorial of the observatory by a new one, operating on the
principle of the spring-governor. Immediately upon its completion, a
new series of experiments was commenced. These have been successful
in transferring to the plate by the collodian process, images of
fixed stars to the fifth magnitude, inclusive, with singular and
unexpected precision. The most remarkable instances of success are the
simultaneous impressions of the group of stars composed of Mizar of the
second magnitude, its companion of the fourth and Alcor of the fifth
magnitude. The following measurements of the angular distance of the
companion from Mizar were taken from the plates.”
[Illustration: THE GOLD MEDAL; REVERSE SHOWING SIR WILLIAM HERSCHEL’S
40-FOOT TELESCOPE.]
A tabulated statement follows in the paper, giving dates from April 27
to May 8, with measurements from 13 photographic negatives produced on
the respective dates. The mean for distance is 14.49 seconds, and for
angle of position, 147°.80. For the same stars observed in the usual
way, Struve’s mean of six observations is, for distance, 14.40 seconds;
for positions, 147°.40.
Mr. Bond’s comments are: “The photographic method has thus in its first
efforts attained the limit of accuracy, beyond which it is not expected
the other can ever be sensibly advanced.
“Should photographic impressions be obtained from stars between the
sixth and eleventh magnitudes as has already been done for those
between the first and fifth, the extension given to our present means
of observation would be an advance in the science of stellar astronomy
of which it would scarcely be possible to exaggerate the importance.”
Mr. Bond made important contributions to the literature of the science
both in its mathematical and practical departments. Among the more
notable of the former was a paper on cometary calculations and the
method of mechanical quadratures, valuable in various respects, and
notable in having anticipated an important improvement afterward
given independently by Encke; also a paper on the use of equivalent
factors in the method of least squares. He wrote a monograph covering
observations of Donati’s comet of 1858, for which he was awarded the
gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and was the first of
his countrymen to obtain that distinction. He began a paper on the
nebula in Orion, which he did not live to complete, though during his
prolonged last illness he continued his labors upon it, and dictated to
an amanuensis long after strength to write had gone from him.
This paper was afterwards finished by Prof. T. H. Safford, then of
Harvard, now of Williams College observatory. A biographer says of Mr.
Bond: “Science to him was not a pastime but a serious calling, to be
pursued with the utmost conscientiousness and singleness of purpose.
That he did so much and did it so well, during the few years allotted
to him, must have been partly owing to an extreme reluctance to
dissipate his powers by beginning new works while the old were still
unfinished.” He received the honorary degree of A.M. from Harvard in
1853.
[Illustration: PRESIDENT JOSIAH QUINCY.]