- Lewis Boss
Infobox Scientist
name = PAGENAME
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birth_date =26 October ,1846
birth_place = Providence,Rhode Island
death_date =12 October ,1912
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nationality = American
ethnicity =
field =astronomy
work_institutions =Dudley Observatory
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known_for = compilation Hyadesstar cluster
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prizes =Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society
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footnotes =Lewis Boss (1846–1912) was an American
astronomer .He was born in Providence,
Rhode Island and attended secondary school at theLapham Institute in North Scituate and theNew Hampton Institution inNew Hampshire . [ [http://books.google.com/books/pdf/Union_University.pdf?id=XG0iAAAAMAAJ&output=pdf&sig=Y4-CpNFl0NVNMZvrCjhoeot45ho Andrew Van VrankenRaymond, "Union University: Its History, Influence, Characteristics and..." Lewis Publishing Co. (1907), 2.] In 1870 he graduated fromDartmouth College , then went to work as aclerk for theU.S. Government . He served as an assistant astronomer for a government expedition to survey the U.S-Canadian border. In 1876 he became the directory of theDudley Observatory inSchenectady ,New York .He became editor of the "
Astronomical Journal " in 1909, but responsibility passed to his son,Benjamin Boss , upon his death in 1912. Benjamin continued to edit the journal until 1941.Lewis Boss is noted for his work in cataloguing the locations and
proper motion s of stars. He also led an expedition toChile in 1882 to observe thetransit of Venus, and also catalogued information concerningcomet aryorbit s.In 1910, he published "Preliminary General Catalogue of 6188 Stars for the Epoch 1900", a compilation of the proper motions of stars. This catalog was later expanded after his death. His most significant discovery was the calculation of the convergent point of the Hyades
star cluster .Boss was awarded the
Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1905.The Boss crater on the
Moon is named after him.References
External links
* "Much of this article was based on the [http://www.dudleyobservatory.org/History/history_lewis_boss.htm Dudley Observatory history] of Lewis Boss."
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