Professor George C. Comstock was born in Madison in 1855, and
after an education obtained at various colleges and
universities, including the institutions of Ann Arbor and
Madison, and after considerable and varied experience in
engineering and astronomical work, he became professor of
astronomy in our own University in 1887, and Director of
Washburn Observatory two years later. Since 1906 he has been
Director of the Graduate School. He is the member of many
learned societies, and has been highly honored in numerous
ways by institutions of learning. The stories that are told,
and truly told, of his mathematical prowess, such as
memorizing tables of logarithms, have excited wonder in the
heart of many a student at Madison. His lectures, even on the
most abstruse subjects, are notably clear. His illustrations
are timely, and his English is of the very purest. He is a
representative of the regular classical education that is now
comparatively rarely elected by university undergraduates.