Book Review: Astronomy in Argentina, Los Cielos del Sur: Los Observatórios Astronómicos de Córdoba y de La Plata, 1870–1920

Abstract

ASTRONOMY IN ARGENTINA Los Cielos del Sur: Los Observatorios Astronomicos de Cordoba y de La Plata, 1870-1920. Mariana Rieznik (prohistoria ediciones, Rosario, 201 1). Pp. 220. $65 (paperback). ISBN 978-987-1304-72-1.This book is the result of Mariana Rieznik's doctoral thesis in the history of science, and constitutes an engaging work with a significant quantity of new data. The book is split into two parts, dealing respectively with the history of the Cordoba Observatory and the La Plata Observatory. The main text is restricted to a specific half-century, but there is an appendix in which the author expands her timeframe a little further, especially for her analysis of the creation of the Escuela Superior de Ciencias Astronomicas y Conexas at Universidad Nacional de La Plata, a story she follows into the mid- 1930s.Based on new research, the work uses a variety of sources, including official reports, newspaper articles, architectural plans, letters and even caricatures. It also identifies some of the scientific instruments used at the observatories. Readers interested in this latter topic may also wish to consult Sixto Ramon Gimenez Benitez's 2009 study of instruments from both observatories or the work by Juan Carlos Forte and Sofia A. Cora on scientific instruments used at the La Plata Observatory.1Built in 1 871 in Cordoba, Argentina's first national observatory was the brainchild of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, a government minister and later national president (1868-74), and the American astronomer Benjamin A. Gould.2 Its founding has usually been analysed within studies of the role of science in the consolidation of the Argentine nation-state. However, Rieznik's investigations show that the new observatory interacted with broader scientific traditions and was markedly shaped by the influence of international scientific networks. This pattern, the author argues, also appears in the development of the observatory at La Plata.It is true that Argentina's politicians used these initiatives as proof of the country's modernizing moves. Meanwhile, the opposition highlighted the excessive cost of creating these scientific institutions, arguing that these monies might be devoted to other priorities. The author includes many caricatures that illustrate these political positions. Nevertheless, while these discussions were being played out in the press and among politicians, diplomats and scientists, the country's foremost astronomers were drawing up plans to equate knowledge of the southern skies with that of the northern hemisphere.Throughout the nineteenth century, it was broadly agreed that determining and recording the position of stars was the most important task of global astronomy, and that the Cordoba Observatory could play an important role in this context. Hence, in the period studied by the author, that observatory devoted itself primarily to positional astrometry, to standardizing and comparing measurements. The star catalogs produced by Gould and John M. Thome3 at Cordoba constitute the most comprehensive records of stars of their day (e.g., the Catalogos de las Zonas Estelares of 73,160 stars and the Catalogo General Argentino of 32,448 stars). The work of this observatory was therefore directly linked to prevailing international efforts of late nineteenth-century astronomy.Under different circumstances but still reflecting international patterns, the La Plata Observatory was created in the midst of the international initiatives to observe the 1882 transit of Venus. …