Civic Astronomy: Albany's Dudley Observatory, 1852-2002 (Astrophysics and Space Science Library) [Hardcover]

George Wise (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1402026773 | ISBN-13: 978-1402026775 | Publication Date: December 20, 2004 | Edition: 1

The founding of the Dudley Observatory at Albany, N.Y., in 1852 was a milestone in humanity's age-old quest to understand the heavens. As the best equipped astronomical observatory in the U.S. led by the first American to hold a Ph.D. in astronomy, Benjamin Apthorp Gould Jr., the observatory helped pioneer world-class astronomy in America. It also proclaimed Albany's status as a major national center of culture, knowledge and affluence. This book explores the story of the Dudley Observatory as a 150 year long episode in civic astronomy. The story ranges from a bitter civic controversy to a venture into space, from the banks of the Hudson River to the highlands of Argentina. It is a unique glimpse at a path not taken, a way of doing science once promising, now vanished. As discoveries by the Dudley Observatory's astronomers, especially its second director Lewis Boss, made significant contributions to the modern vision of our Milky Way galaxy as a rotating spiral of more than a million stars, the advance of astronomy left that little observatory behind.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 225 pages
• Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (December 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402026773
• ISBN-13: 978-1402026775
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,662,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars History of Science in America: For the Serious, February 10, 2009

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Dr. Victor S. Alpher (Austin, Texas, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Civic Astronomy: Albany's Dudley Observatory, 1852-2002 (Astrophysics and Space Science Library) (Hardcover)

George Wise did a great service in producing a marvelous book that will be read probably by few, yet fills and important gap in the history of science for the public in America. There is no doubt that, more than any other country, America values an educated lay public, and the efforts of the citizens of Albany, New York, to create a world-class observatory in the 1850s is known by few. However, this volume, more encompassing than "Elites in Conflict", shows on the one hand how intense the struggle can be to professionalize a scientific field on the one hand, and make it accessible and appealing to the public, on the other. With access to archival material necessary to make such a broad ranging survey, George Wise has distilled the over 150-year history of the Dudley Observatory into a fairly brief but well-documented study.

His history of Civic Astronomy with Dudley Observatory as the case study, does not answer the question as to whether these two goals can ever be reconciled. However, I am quite certain that he has shown that, if it can be accomplished at all, it will only be possible in a free and democratic society. He leaves us with the unanswerable question, and, I believe, with the hope that that struggle will continue and not be abandoned.