Joseph Stillman Hubbard

Who was Joseph Stillman Hubbard?

Joseph Stillman Hubbard was an American astronomer from New Haven, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale University in 1843, whither he had been attracted by Ebenezer Porter Mason, then one of Yale’s enthusiastic astronomers. Subsequently he studied mathematics and astronomy at home, and also taught for a while in a classical school, but early in 1844 he went to Philadelphia as assistant of Sears Cook Walker, who had charge of the observatory of the high-school in that city.

In the autumn of the same year he was appointed computer of the observations of latitude and longitude made on Captain John Charles Frémont’s expedition across the Rocky mountains. This work was accomplished so successfully that Professor Alexander Dallas Bache, Colonel John Charles Frémont, and Senator Thomas Hart Benton used their influence with Sec. George Bancroft to have him appointed professor of mathematics in the navy. He was so commissioned on 7 May 1845 and was immediately assigned to duty at the Washington Observatory, of which he continued to be an officer during the remainder of his life.

The first extended computation made by Prof. Hubbard after his assignment to the observatory was the determination of the zodiacs of all the known asteroids, except four previously published in Germany.