Truman Henry Safford

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Truman Henry Safford (ca.1844)

Truman Henry Safford (born January 6, 1836 in Royalton , Vermont , † June 13, 1901 in Newark , New Jersey ) was an American astronomer .

Truman Henry Safford was a math prodigy . When he was nine years old, a priest asked him to multiply 365'365'365'365'365'365 by himself. In less than a minute he had the correct answer: 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225. Around this age he developed a new method to calculate the moonrises , which took about a quarter of the time as the previous methods.

However, he went to a normal school and studied astronomy. Truman worked first at the Harvard College Observatory , then at the Dearborn Observatory , until he finally became the second director of the Hopkins Observatory at Williams College , the oldest surviving observatory in the United States. He remained director of this observatory until his death.

In 1861 Safford was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

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