James Curley (astronomer)

James Curley was an Irish-American astronomer and Jesuit, born on 26 October 1796 at Athleague in County Roscommon and dead on 24 July 1889. His talent for mathematics was noticed by a local teacher, and he emigrated, reaching Philadelphia in October 1817, where he worked as a bookkeeper before teaching mathematics at Frederick in Maryland. He entered the Society of Jesus on 29 September 1827, was ordained in 1833, and spent the rest of his life at Georgetown, teaching natural philosophy and mathematics for forty-eight years. He planned and supervised the building of the Georgetown Observatory in 1844 and was its first director. In 1846 he determined the latitude and longitude of Washington, D.C.; his figures disagreed with those of the Naval Observatory and were later found to be near the truth after the first transatlantic cable of 1858. He also took an interest in botany and wrote Annals of the Observatory of Georgetown College in 1852.