Catherine Wolfe Bruce was a noted American philanthropist and patroness of astronomy.

She was the daughter of the famous type founder George Bruce

George Bruce (Design patent)

George Bruce was a Scottish-American inventor and businessman. Co-owner of a type foundry in New York, on 9 November 1842 he was awarded the first design patent for fonts .Emigrating from Scotland to the United States in July 1795, he was one of the...

 and Catherine Wolfe. In 1887 she donated the George Bruce Free Library.
Between 1889 and 1899 she donated funds to the Harvard College Observatory

Harvard College Observatory

The Harvard College Observatory is an institution managing a complex of buildings and multiple instruments used for astronomical research by the Harvard University Department of Astronomy. It is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, and was founded in 1839...

 (U.S.A.), Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory

Yerkes Observatory is an astronomical observatory operated by the University of Chicago in Williams Bay, Wisconsin. The observatory, which calls itself "the birthplace of modern astrophysics," was founded in 1897 by George Ellery Hale and financed by Charles T. Yerkes...

 (U.S.A.) and Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl

Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Königstuhl

The Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory is an historic astronomical observatory located near the summit of the Königstuhl hill in the city of Heidelberg in Germany...

 (Germany), run by Max Wolf

Max Wolf

Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf was a German astronomer and a pioneer in the field of astrophotography...

 at the time, to buy new telescopes at each of those institutes.

The Bruce Medal

Bruce Medal

The Catherine Wolfe Bruce Gold Medal is awarded every year by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific for outstanding lifetime contributions to astronomy. It is named after Catherine Wolfe Bruce, an American patroness of astronomy, and was first awarded in 1898...

 of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Astronomical Society of the Pacific

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...

 is named after her, as well as the asteroid

Asteroid

Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...

 323 Brucia

323 Brucia

323 Brucia was the first asteroid to be discovered by the use of astrophotography. It was also the first of over 200 asteroids discovered by Max Wolf, a pioneer in that method of finding astronomical objects...

, and the crater Bruce

Bruce (crater)

Bruce is a small lunar impact crater located in the Sinus Medii. It lies to the west-northwest of the irregular crater Rhaeticus, and just to the west of the even smaller Blagg....

 on the Moon

Moon

The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

.