Bailey, Solon I.

Solon Irving Bailey (1854-1931), Phillips Professor of Astronomy at Harvard, spent forty four years with the Harvard College Observatory. Bailey was largely responsible for the successful establishment of Harvard's Boyden Station observatory in Arequipa, Peru. Bailey's pioneering photographic studies of globular clusters, variable stars, nebulae, and galactic clusters provided the basis from which other astronomers were able to determine the size of the Milky Way and other galaxies.

Bailey (Harvard, A.M., 1888) taught astronomy at Harvard.

Solon Irving Bailey (1854-1931), Phillips Professor of Astronomy at Harvard, spent forty four years with the Harvard College Observatory. Bailey was largely responsible for the successful establishment of Harvard’s Boyden Station observatory in Arequipa, Peru. Bailey’s pioneering photographic studies of globular clusters, variable stars, nebulae, and galactic clusters provided the basis from which other astronomers were able to determine the size of the Milky Way and other galaxies.

Bailey was born and raised in New Hampshire. After graduating from Tilton Academy in 1877, where he later served briefly as headmaster, he received a bachelor’s degree (1881) and master’s degree (1884) from Boston University.

Bailey joined the staff of the Harvard College Observatory as a volunteer in 1887. In 1889, HCO Director Edward C. Pickering sent him to South America to find a suitable site for a telescope to extend Harvard’s astronomical observations to the southern hemisphere. Bailey traveled in Peru for two years, selecting Arequipa as the site of the Boyden Station observatory, where he served as director until 1905. He also established a series of meteorological stations, culminating in 1893 with the establishment of a weather station near the peak of El Misti, a volcano overlooking the city of Arequipa.

In 1908, after severe weather rendered observations at Arequipa increasingly difficult, Bailey traveled to South Africa to explore new locations for the Boyden Station. He eventually recommended a site near Bloemfontein, although a lack of funds delayed the move until 1927.

Bailey made his final trip to Peru in 1922, where he received an honorary degree from the University of San Agustin in Arequipa. When he returned to Cambridge, he resumed work on his astronomical research and wrote the History and Work of the Harvard College Observatory 1839-1927, which was published shortly before his death in 1931.