Phillip Sidney Coolidge

Phillip Sidney Coolidge (born August 22, 1830 in Boston , † September 19, 1863 near Chickamauga , Georgia ) was an American astronomer and lieutenant colonel in the US Army .

Life

He was the son of Joseph Coolidge and Eleonora Wayles Randolph Coolidge. He had four siblings Ellen, Elizabeth, Joseph and Algernon. Through his mother, Eleonora, he was the great grandson of Thomas Jefferson , the third President of the United States . From 1839 to 1850 he studied in Geneva and Vevey in Switzerland and at the Royal Military Academy Dresden in Germany .

Back in the United States, he worked first in railroad construction in Minnesota , then in the bureau for the nautical yearbook and at the Cambridge Observatory. In 1853 he was assistant astronomer on an expedition to Japan . In 1854 he was an assistant to George Phillips Bond at the Harvard College Observatory . He assisted Bond in his observations of the planet Saturn and its rings. Some of Coolidge's observations and drawings were published in the observatory's yearbooks, leading to entries in the New General Catalog by Johan Ludvig Emil Dreyer . In 1855, Coolidge was in charge of a chronometric expedition to determine the differences in longitude between Cambridge and Greenwich .

During the Civil War he was killed in the battle of the Chickamauga , a tributary of the Tennessee River , in 1863.

Web links

Eric Jamison: The Bond's: Pioneers of American Astronomy. Retrieved July 11, 2015 .
Courtney Seligman: The Discoverers of the NGC / IC Objects: Sidney Coolidge. Retrieved July 11, 2015 .
Wolfgang Steinicke: Phillip Sydney Coolidge. Retrieved July 11, 2015 .

Individual evidence

↑ Maj Philip Sidney Coolidge. Find A Grave, accessed July 11, 2015 .
↑ ^a ^b Coolidge, Phillip Sidney . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 1 : Aaron - Crandall . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 723 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
↑ William Sheehan, Stephen James O'Meara: Major Phillip Sidney Coolidge, Former Harvard Astronomer. Sky & Telescope, pg. 71, accessed July 11, 2015 .

personal data
SURNAME	Coolidge, Phillip Sidney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	American astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 22, 1830
PLACE OF BIRTH	Boston
DATE OF DEATH	September 19, 1863
Place of death	Chickamauga

[FINDAGRAVE-1] Maj Philip Sidney Coolidge. Find A Grave, accessed July 11, 2015 .

[APPLETONS-2] Coolidge, Phillip Sidney . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 1 : Aaron - Crandall . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 723 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).

[CIVIL-WAR-L_Archives-3] William Sheehan, Stephen James O'Meara: Major Phillip Sidney Coolidge, Former Harvard Astronomer. Sky & Telescope, pg. 71, accessed July 11, 2015 .