Background
George Bond was born on May 20, 1825, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, United States, the son of William Cranch Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory, and of Selina (Cranch) Bond.
George Bond was born on May 20, 1825, in Dorchester, Massachusetts, United States, the son of William Cranch Bond, director of the Harvard College Observatory, and of Selina (Cranch) Bond.
George Bond graduated from Harvard in 1845
After graduation George Bond was immediately appointed assistant observer. His strongest inclination was toward ornithology but he had a strong passion for all the beauties of nature, and he was very happy in his ability to make other people, especially children, see these beauties. He and his father worked together on many investigations. The method of determining parallax by measurements of right ascension, east and west of the meridian, was independently proposed by the Bonds and applied to Mars in 1849-1850. On the death of his father in 1859 George Bond succeeded him as director of the Harvard College Observatory. He had no private resources at his disposal and the funds of the institution were wholly inadequate to its needs. The war broke out and further pinching economies became necessary. In spite of all these difficulties the work of the observatory was continued at the same high standard.
In the years 1847-1856 a vast quantity of drawings and measurements of Saturn were accumulated. The observation of new divisions and of the transparency of the crape ring called for a revision of the theory of a solid structure of the rings. The facts were reviewed and the hypothesis of a fluid state of the rings advanced by George Bond in 1851. No memoir on comets approaches in completeness that of the Donati comet of 1858 by George Bond in the Annals of the Harvard College Observatory, vol. III (1862). Every phenomenon of the great comet was described, the text illustrated with a remarkable series of drawings, and many important conclusions drawn.
His researches in photometry were most suggestive. His photographs showed that the reflecting power of Jupiter is much greater than that of the moon; with his ingenious device of reflection from a silvered glass globe he determined the variation of the brightness of the moon with phase and compared the brightness of the moon with that of Venus, Jupiter, and the sun.
At the time of his death he was at work on the discussion of the drawings and measurements of the Orion Nebula which he had undertaken as a vindication of his father's work. The loss of his wife, his youngest child, and his father, all within a few months, and the contraction of the disease (tuberculosis) which destroyed him at the age of forty combined to make his path hard. Though repeatedly warned that the only remedy was rest, he could not leave his work.
Bond was deeply religious, conscientious, and untiring. In appearance he was rather tall and slender, becoming in later years painfully thin. While modest and unassuming, he had a strong sense of justice and a due estimate of his own worth.
George Bond was married to Harriet Gardner Harris.