The Dudley Observatory controversy
of 1857-58 pitted the majority of the board
of trustees of the Observatory against its Scientific Council.
The trustees, designated by the 1852 charter as the Observatory's
governing body, had created that Scientific Council in 1856 in
order to help launch a program of astronomical observations. The
Council aimed to supervise a joint effort by the
U.S. Coast Survey and the Dudley
Observatory to carry out a program of astronomical observations of
value both to map-making and science.
The Council consisted of four of the nation's most
distinguished scientists Alexander Dallas
Bache, director of the U.S. Coast Survey,
Joseph Henry, an Albany native and
pioneer in electromagnetism then directing the Smithsonian
Institution, Benjamin Peirce,
professor of mathematics at Harvard, and Benjamin
A. Gould, a staff member of the Coast Survey and at the time
the only American to hold a Ph.D. in astronomy. He had been
designated by the Council to direct observations at the Dudley
Observatory.
Under an agreement arrived at in the summer of 1856 by the
trustees and the Council, Gould went to Europe and bought
equipment for the observatory, He returned to supervise its
installation at Albany, and to direct the initial observing
program. Both parties carried out their side of the agreement
amicably about a year, although most of Gould's directing was done
by letter from Cambridge, Mass., rather than on site at Albany. In
late 1857, following delays in getting the Observatory into
operation, and anticipated shortages of funds, the Council and the
Trustees parted company on policy. The Council wanted to suspend
activities temporarily at the Observatory until financial matters
were more solid (the nation was then in the midst of a business
depression) while the Trustees wanted to push ahead by hiring one
of the Coast Survey employees working in Albany,
Christian H. F. Peters, to complete
installation of the equipment and begin observations.
For reasons having more to do with 19th century senses of
honor, responsibility and gentlemanly behavior than with
astronomy, this issue escalated into a full-fledged controversy
between the Trustees and the Scientific Council. For a
well-researched account, see the book
Elites in Conflict by Mary
Ellen James*. The council, citing the role of the
observatory as a scientific institution on a national or even
world scale, sought to gain full control. The trustees, citing the
organization's charter, strove to maintain their leading position.
Minor incidents gave rise to major rounds of recrimination. For
example, a summer, 1858, visit to the observatory grounds by two
representatives of the trustees' cause led to, depending on the
interpretation, either a rude verbal assault on the astronomers by
the trustees, or the slamming and locking of the observatory door
by the astronomers in the face of the rightful owners, the
trustees.
This "siege of the observatory" and the resulting exchanges
between the parties became the occasion (though not the real
cause) for the dismissal of Gould by the Trustees . The Council
refused to recognize this dismissal, Gould stayed at the
Observatory, and each side recruited support not only in Albany
but as far away as Washington, D.C. Hot words between the parties
echoed in newspaper stories in Albany, New York City, and Boston,
and in hundreds of pages of specially printed accusations and
rebuttals. The controversy split Albany's social, political and
business community, and influenced the 1858 congressional
election. In the end, the trustees prevailed. Gould was evicted
from the Observatory in January, 1859, and the connection between
the Council and the Observatory was dissolved. Effects on the
protagonists were severe and long lasting. Gould never gained any
academic or research post in the United States, while the
observatory did not achieve a significant research role in
American astronomy for more than 20 years.
The controversy has in the past been interpreted by historians
as a battle between professional and amateur views of science,
between scientific arrogance and civic responsibility, or between
local boosterism and scientific nationalism. More recent
interpretations by James and others find these antitheses
oversimplified. The controversy is seen by these scholars as part
of the growing pains of American science, a significant episode in
the trial and error process of defining how a nominally democratic
but actually economically and socially stratified society might
support scientific research. According to this interpretation, the
desire of patrons to support science without participating in it,
and of scientists to perform science without personally funding
it, easily led to misunderstandings. The patrons' concepts of
gentlemanly behavior and financial trust clashed with the
scientists' views on scientific stewardship. The subsequent
increasing professionalization of science and formalization of
philanthropic efforts (as exemplified in the Carnegie Institution
and Rockefeller Foundation of the early twentieth century)
embodied the lessons learned, sometimes in an unpleasant manner,
from such episodes as the Dudley Observatory controversy.
*Elites in Conflict: the
antebellum clash over the Dudley Observatory, New
Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1987.
The
Dudley Observatory
