author
Daniel W. Baker
Known for a concise early history of the Harvard College Observatory, this writer helped bring lesser-known details of the observatory’s first decades into print. His surviving work has remained available through major public-domain archives, giving modern readers a glimpse of late 19th-century scientific history writing.
1 Audiobook
History of the Harvard College Observatory During the Period 1840-1890
by Daniel W. Baker
About the author
Daniel W. Baker is best known for History of the Harvard College Observatory During the Period 1840-1890, a short historical work first published in 1890. The book grew out of a series of articles for the Boston Evening Traveller and focused on the observatory’s first fifty years, drawing attention to facts that had not previously appeared in print.
Public-domain records show that this is the principal work currently associated with his name, and it continues to be preserved by sources such as Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, and the Online Books Page. That lasting availability has helped keep Baker’s contribution alive for readers interested in astronomy, institutions, and the history of science.
Reliable biographical details about his life are limited in the sources reviewed here, so it is safest to remember him mainly through this surviving publication and its careful, document-based look at an important American observatory.