Edward Singleton Holden (November 5, 1846 – March 16, 1914) was an American astronomer and the fifth president of the University of California.
Contents
Early years
He was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1846 to Edward and Sarah Frances (Singleton) Holden. From 1862 to 1866, he attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he obtained a B.S. degree. He later trained at West Point in the class of 1870.
Career
In 1873 he became professor of mathematics at the US Naval Observatory, where he made a favorable impression on Simon Newcomb. On August 28, 1877, a few days after Asaph Hall discovered the moons of Mars Deimos and Phobos, he claimed to have found a third satellite of Mars. Further analysis showed large mistakes in his observations.
He was director of Washburn Observatory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1881 to 1885. He was elected a member of both the American National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1885. He discovered a total of 22 NGC objects during his work at Washburn Observatory.