The Riverview College Observatory was built in 1909, and was established by the distinguished Jesuit astronomer and seismologist, Edward Francis Pigot (1858–1929), who ordered a complete set of seismographs from Göttingen. Daniel O'Connell was director of the Observatory from 1938 and was later called to be director of the Vatican Observatory. Another distinguished Jesuit seismologist and astronomer, Thomas Burke-Gaffney, became assistant-director of the Observatory in 1946 and director from 1952. His studies of seismic aspects of nuclear explosions garnered worldwide attention and he served as vice-president of the Royal Society of New South Wales.