Un discípulo de Gauss en la Argentina

Abstract

Benjamin A. Gould, an outstanding northamerican astronomer and geodesist of the mid-19th century spent a few years in Europe during his early twenties to widen his background in contact with colleagues of the Old Continent, where the sciences of this area were already florishing. In 1848, while staying at Gottingen, the produced under the tutorage of Carl Friedrich Gauss a doctoral thesis on the orbits of the planetoids between Mars and Jupiter. After returning to the US he worked on longitude determinations using submarine cables, established and conducted and observatory (Dudley, Albany, N. Y.), founded and conducted the "Astronomical Journal", and determined corrections to the positions  for a great number of fixed stars. Following a call by President Sarmiento he established at Córdoba, in 1872, the Observatorio Astronómico and the Oficina Meteorológica Argentina (at present: Servicio Meteorológico Nacional), conducting both until his return to the US in 1885. He carried out a systematical survey of the stars on the southern sky and started the publication of the regular annual reports of the two institutions mentioned. His work was widely recognized and he obtained numerous distinctions in Argentina and abroad, especially for his "Uranometría Argentina". Several place names recall Gould in Argentina.