Asaph Hall Biography

Connor Boles

Mr. Percival

Astronomy Honors

5 Mar. 2013

Asaph Hall Biography

            Asaph Hall was born in 1829 in Goshen, Connecticut. He was born to a middle class family yet financial problems arose when his father died when he was only 13. Asaph was in schooling until  his father died and when that happened he left school to become an apprentice to a carpenter. Later in life he was able to enroll in the Central College in McGrawville, New York. This was when his life took a turn and it really started in the astronomical world.

            While enrolled in college Asaph studied mathematics where he fell in love with one of the instructors whose name was Angeline Stickney, and the two married in 1856. It was that year that Hall got a job at the Harvard College Observatory where he then learned and later was renowned for his skill concerning orbits. In 1862 he left his job at the Harvard conservatory to become employed US Naval Observatory where in less than a year he became a professor. He was then stationed in Washington, DC where he was able to pursue his studies with some of the best technology in the world. In 1872 Hall submitted an article on his findings titled “On an Experimental Determination of Pi” to the Messenger of Mathematics. The paper was instrumental in his career for his name was out and the paper was used for many things on the future including the Manhattan Project during the 1940’s. In 1975 his big break in astronomy came. He was given the control of USNO 26 inch telescope, which was the largest refracting telescope in the world at that time. In August of 1877 he found the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. It was the first sighting of the two moons and he was known around the astronomical world for his findings. Using the telescope he was also able to calculate Saturn’s rotational period. He did extensive research on Saturn and was able to prove retrograde motion on the part of one of Saturn’s moons Hyperion. He became an expert in stellar parallaxes around the solar system and the galaxy until his retirement in 1891. After retiring he became a professor at Harvard University in 1896 and taught there until 1901. His first wife Angeline died in 1892 but he later remarried to Mary Gauther. Once remarried he moved back to the city of his birth where he spent his remaining years until in 1907 when visiting his son in Annapolis, Maryland he died.

            Asaph Hall was one of the most brilliant mathematicians in the astronomical field in his time and he was able to discover and do much research on moons and stellar parallax. His legacy lived on with his son Asaph Hall Jr. who later was an astronomer. Although not a recognized name he fully exploited his opportunity with the USNO 26 inch telescope and also at the US Naval Observatory as well as the Harvard College Observatory.