George Mary Searle discovered asteroid 55 Pandora in 1858. The discovery took place on 10 September at the Dudley Observatory in Albany, New York.
Searle was an American astronomer who later became known for his work at observatories and in astronomy education. Pandora was one of the numbered minor planets found during the rapid expansion of asteroid discoveries in the nineteenth century.
The asteroid received the mythological name Pandora, but it should not be confused with Saturn’s moon Pandora, discovered much later by Voyager 1 in 1980. One object is a main-belt asteroid orbiting the Sun; the other is a small satellite orbiting Saturn.
Nineteenth-century asteroid discoveries were often assigned names from classical mythology. The numbering system records discovery order among recognized minor planets, so “55 Pandora” means it was the fifty-fifth asteroid to receive an official number, not that it is fifty-five kilometers wide.