Winslow Upton papers (MS-1UF-U1)

Biographical/Historical note

Winslow Upton (born in Salem, Massachusetts, 12 October 1853; died Providence, Rhode Island, 8 January 1914) was a United States astronomer. He graduated from Brown University. He was an assistant at the Harvard Observatory for several years, then assistant engineer of the Army Engineer Corps' Lake Survey. Upton became a computer at the Naval Observatory in Washington in 1880. He worked with the United States Signal Office from 1881 to 1883. In May of 1883 he accompanied a group of scientists to Carolina Island in the Pacific to view a solar eclipse, an event which resulted in his writing The Carolina Island Opera. He was appointed professor of astronomy at Brown in 1883 and became director of Ladd Observatory when it opened in 1891. He was a member of the U. S. government eclipse expeditions of 1878 and 1883, also of two private expeditions sent out in 1887 and 1889, and in 1896-1897 was attached to the southern station of Harvard University at Arequipa, Peru. He was appointed the first dean of the University in 1900, but resigned that position a year later. In December 1913, after directing the Christmas music performed by his church choir, he became ill with pneumonia and died on January 8, 1914.