Catherine Wolfe Bruce

Bruce double astrograph at the Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl, Germany

Catherine Wolfe Bruce (January 22, 1816, New York – March 13, 1900, New York) was a noted American philanthropist and patroness of astronomy.

Early life

She was the daughter of the famous type founder George Bruce, who was born in Edinburgh, and Catherine Wolfe (1785–1861), the daughter of David Wolfe (1748–1836) of New York City. Her first cousin was Catharine Lorillard Wolfe (1828–1887), a partial inheritor of the Lorillard fortune, through her mother's brother, John David Wolfe (1792–1872).^[1]

Philanthropy

In 1887, she donated the George Bruce Free Library. Between 1889 and 1899 she donated funds to the Harvard College Observatory (U.S.A.), Yerkes Observatory (U.S.A.) and Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl (Germany), run by Max Wolf at the time, to buy new telescopes at each of those institutes.

Honors

The Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific is named after her, as well as the asteroid 323 Brucia, and the crater Bruce on the Moon.

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