Gould, Benjamin Apthorp (1824-1896)

US astronomer. He organized and was the first director of the Argentine National Observatory at Córdoba 1868-85. His Uranometria Argentina (1879) gives the estimated magnitudes of 8,000 stars visible from Córdoba, and clearly shows Gould's Belt, a group of bright stars spread in a broad band inclined at about 20° to the galactic equator.

Gould was born in Boston, and educated at Harvard and Göttingen. He founded and for many years edited the Astronomical Journal, still one of the leading US astronomical periodicals.