Amherst College - Olio Yearbook (Amherst, MA)

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VOLUME LV, 1912 3 Professor David Todd ' ROFESSOR DAVID TODD was born at Lake Ridge, near Ithaca, New York, March 19, 1855. At the age of five he moved with his parents to Auburn, and at ten to Brooklyn. KC 5 px Developing an early interest in astronomy, he made himself a little telescope when he was twelve, with which he got his first glimpse of the four moons of Jupiter. He entered Columbia with the class of 1874, spending there freshman and sophomore years. As Columbia had no observatory, he entered Amherst College as a junior, graduating CPhi Beta Kappaj with the class of 1875. While still an undergraduate, he was accorded all the facilities of the old observatory, where he finished a series of valuable observations of Jupiter's satellites, which immediately attracted the atten- tion of the government astronomers, and led to his appointment in VVash- ington, at once after graduation, at the U. S. Naval Observatory. Here he spent three years. Subsequently made chief assistant in the office of the American Ephcmcris and Nauiical Almanac, he was in 1881 recalled to Amherst as Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Observatory. He was also Professor of Astronomy and Higher Mathematics at Smith College for five years, and designed and built the observatory there. Professor Todd made his first astronomical expedition under the auspices of tl1e U. S. Navy Department in 1878, to view a total eclipse of the sun in Texas, subsequently to which in 1880 he published a research on the sun' s distance and parallax, which he found almost exactly the same in amount as the most accurate values of the present day. His second expedition was to Mount Hamilton in California, where at the Lick Observatory he took charge of the observations of the transit of Venus in 1882. This was the first important astronomical research undertaken at that now famous observatory, and was a most fruitful expedition. The 145 photographs of the planet in the various stages of its transit are the finest ever obtained-an Amherst supremacy which will last for several generations, as no transit of Venus occurs again until the year 2004. In 1887 Professor Todd was appointed by the National Academy of Sciences chief of an expedition to Japan for a total eclipse of the sun. 'zii r 'Q. iSQE..gndf

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4 THE AMHERST OLIO Later in that trip he conducted observations at the summit of the sacred mountain, Fuji San, in the interest of the Harvard College Observatory. During the New Year's day eclipse of 1889, his first proving it possible to telegraph from one station to another in advance of the moon's shadow led to his being called the man who beat the moon. Professor Todd organized the U. S. Government expedition to the West Coast of Africa, for another total eclipse, in 1889, the U. S. S. Pensacola being detailed for the expedition. Although, unfortunately, the day of the eclipse was cloudy, his expedition gathered much valuable scientific material in the departments of folk-lore, natural history, and terrestrial physics, which has been utilized in a series of government reports. Returning by Capetown, Ascension, and St. Helena, observations were conducted at each place. Professor Todd had charge of the Amherst College Exhibit at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in 1893. He collected and arranged a large amount of material showing the progress and achievements of Amherst along many lines, and for its excellence the college was awarded a medal. In 1896, through the generosity of D. Willis James, and Arthur Curtiss James, '89, of New York, an Amherst College expedition crossed the Pacific to northern Japan in their schooner yacht Coronet, and Pro- fessor Todd made observations of the eclipse at Esashi, in Kitami, a province on the shore of the Okhotsk Sea, among the hairy Ainus, a region hitherto unvisited by foreigners. ' After this expedition, during which Professor Todd founded a library at Esashi, and to which he later added many books and photographs, the Emperor bestowed upon him the imperial Sake cup for his varied services in the cause of education in Japan. The old observatory at Amherst and the old telescope, among the earliest in the country, were becoming antiquated. The equipment was wholly inadequate to the modern needs of a progressive science. In 1900 Professor Todd made a tour of European Observatories with a view to embodying their best features, and by his efforts 875,000 were raised for the department, to purchase a new telescope, and to erect a new building here, which he designed. During this year he visited Tripoli in Africa, where, in the clear air of the desert of Sahara, he made very successful observa- tions of the sun's eclipse. I In 1901 a trip around the world was undertaken, another Amherst College expedition, for the purpose of studying the longest totality in historic time. Professor Todd established his station at Singkep, a small