Joseph Winlock. [From The Nation 20.520 (17 June 1875): 409-410.] ⁴⁴

—Professor Joseph Winlock, Director of the Observatory of Harvard College, died suddenly after a brief illness last Friday morning, June 11, at the age of forty-nine. One of the foremost of American astronomers, whose honorable career in science began thirty years ago, who has filled with great credit several important positions of scientific labor and trust, is thus cut off in the midst of a life whose usefulness cannot be estimated by ordinary standards. Well-known and highly estimated by all active collaborators in astronomy, both at home and abroad, he was never so well-known to others or to the public as his important services deserved. This was chiefly on account of a modest shrinking from any candidacy for honors, amounting almost to an aversion from them, and an indifference to an uncritical or merely popular reputation. Immediately upon graduating from Shelby College, Kentucky, in 1845, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy in that College, where he remained until 1853, when he removed to Cambridge, Mass., and took part in the computations of the ‘American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac,’ then under the superintendence of Admiral C. H. Davis. In 1857, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics of the United States Navy; and in that capacity served in succession as Assistant at the Naval Observatory at Washington, as Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac and as Director of the Mathematical Department of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md. On the breaking out of the war, in 1801, he was a second time made Superintendent of the Nautical Almanac. His next service to astronomy was in the position of Director of the Observatory of Harvard College, and Phillips Professor of Astronomy, to which he was appointed in 1865—a position already made highly honorable by the labors of his predecessors, the distinguished astronomers, Professors W. C. Bond and G. P. Bond. Ho has also served at the same time as Professor of Geodesy in the Mining School of Harvard College. Only a few months ago, Mr. Bristow appointed him the Chairman of the Congressional Commission for Investigating the Causes of Steam-Boiler Explosions. These many appointments to places of responsibility are evidences of the rare sagacity, skill, sound judgment, and integrity of character which were qualities conspicuous to all who knew him well or dealt with him in his various duties. Upon taking charge of the Cambridge Observatory, he proceeded with energy to complete its equipment, adding to its already famous resources a meridian circle, constructed in accordance with his designs by Throughton &Simms of London—an instrument whose performance has been pronounced by competent judges the best of its kind in the world. The distinguished astronomer, Adams, of Cambridge, England, subsequently ordered an instrument from the same makers to be constructed on the same model. Professor Winlock also secured for this Observatory a very perfect astronomical clock, made by Frodsham of London, from which, through contrivances of his own, true time is telegraphed to neighboring cities. He also set the famous equatorial instrument of the Observatory upon a new career of usefulness and glory in astronomical spectroscopy. In 1870, he put into regular working efficiency a mode of observing the sun—namely, by a single lens, a heliostat, and photograph—which he independently conceived, and was the first to utilize as a form of systematic observatory work. French astronomers have lately been contending with one another about priority in the conception of this method of observation, which was so important a part of the equipment for observing the transit of Venus last December furnished to American expeditions; but in all that really constitutes effective originality the honor of this invention undoubtedly belongs to Professor Winlock. He was, however, almost entirely indifferent, in the singleness of his devotion to his favorite science, to popular fame, or even to contemporary recognition. Besides his observatory work, he was engaged on two occasions in the direction of expeditions to observe solar eclipses—namely, that to Kentucky in August, 1869, and that to Spain in December, 1870. Though ingenious as an inventor, his judiciousness was so much more prominent a quality that his originality is shown rather in a thoroughness and detailed efficiency of contrivance than in the more brilliant qualities that distinguish the more famous inventors. Very numerous little but very effective improvements in astronomical methods distinguish the astronomical art of the present day: and in these Professor Winlock's originality was very considerable.

Among his published works, besides the ‘Annals of the Observatory’ under his directorship, are a set of tables of the planet Mercury (arranged with characteristic neatness and ingenuity); brief papers in astronomical journals and in the ‘Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.’ He was a native of Kentucky, and the grandson of General Joseph Winlock, who entered the American army at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and also served in the war of 1812, and was a member of the convention which drew up the constitution of the State of Kentucky.