Alister Gould

Alister Douglas Gould (September 27, 1824 – November 26, 1896) was an American astronomer.

Gould graduated from Harvard in 1844, receiving his Ph.D. in Göttingen, Germany in 1848. He returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts and started the Astronomical Journal in 1849, which he published until 1861. He resumed publication in 1885. In 1866 he used the recently established trans-Atlantic cable to make precise measurements of the difference in longitude between Europe and North America.

He served as director of the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York from 1856 to 1859. He helped prepare for publication the records of the U.S. Naval Observatory. He was director of the Longitude Department of the U.S. Coast Survey from 1852–1867.

In 1868 he became the first director of the Argentine National Observatory (today, Observatorio Astronómico de Córdoba ). While there, he extensively mapped the southern hemisphere skies using newly developed photometric methods. He remained in Argentina until 1885, when he returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1883 and the James Craig Watson Medal in 1887. A crater on the Moon is named after him.