|
Acland to Brown T Abram, John, teacher of navigation, wrote 1 tidal letter. Acland, Arthur Hugh, wrote 2 tidal letters. Aird, received 1 tidal letter. Airy, George
Biddell (1801-1892), astronomer royal, was born at Alnwick in Northumberland.
At ten years of age he took first place in Byatt Walker's school at Colchester. He met at his house
James Ransome and studied optics, chemistry, and mechanics in his library. From 1814 to 1819 Airy attended the grammar school at
Colchester. He was sent to Cambridge, and entered as sizar of Trinity College, and in 1823 graduated as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman.
He received in 1831 the Copley medal from the Royal Society. He was admitted to membership of the Astronomical and Geological Societies respectively in 1828 and 1829, and was awarded in 1833 the gold medal of the former body for his detection of the ‘long inequality’ of Venus and the earth, communicated to the Royal Society on 24 Nov. 1831. The Lalande prize followed in 1834, and on 9 Jan. 1835 he was elected a correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences. Airy's tenure of the office of astronomer-royal lasted forty-six years. He completely re-equipped the Royal Observatory with instruments designed by himself. The mass of materials thus provided was indispensable to the progress of celestial mechanics. In the autumn of 1854 he superintended an elaborate series of pendulum-experiments for the purpose of measuring the increase of gravity with descent below the earth's surface. Similar attempts made by him in the Dolcoath mine, Cornwall, in 1826 and 1828, with the co-operation of William Whewell [q.v.] and Richard Sheepshanks [q.v.], had been accidentally frustrated. He sat on the tidal harbour and railway gauge commissions in 1845. The reduction of tidal observations in Ireland and India, and the determination in 1862 of the difference of longitude between Valencia, co. Kerry, and Greenwich, engaged his strenuous attention. He failed in 1853 to obtain the office of superintendent of the Nautical Almanac, although ‘willing to take it at a low rate for the addition to my salary.’ Airy was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 21 Jan. 1836, frequently sat on the council, and was president 1872-73. He presided over the Royal Astronomical Society during three biennial periods, and for a fourth term of one year only; he presided over the British Association at its Ipswich meeting in 1851. He became a member of the Cambridge Philosophical Society in 1823, and later of the Institution of Civil Engineers, of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, of the Royal Irish Academy, and of several foreign scientific bodies. On 18 March 1872 he succeeded Sir John Herschel as one of eight foreign members of the French Institute; he was presented in 1875 with the freedom of the city of London, was created D.C.L of Oxford (20 June 1844), LL.D. of Cambridge (1862) and Edinburgh, and elected honorary fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. The czar Nicholas sent him a gold medal specially struck; and among the orders conferred upon him were those of Pour le Mérite of Prussia, of the Legion of Honour, of the North Star of Sweden, of the Dannebrog, and of the Rose of Brazil. On 17 May 1871 he was appointed companion of the Bath, and, a year later (17 June 1872), was promoted to be knight commander. His wife died on 13 Aug. 1875, and on the ground of the lapse of her pension Airy obtained an augmentation of his salary to 1,200l. yearly. Airy was an indefatigable traveller. In 1829 he inspected the observatories of Turin, Milan, Bologna, and Florence; in 1835 examined the Markree refractor in Ireland, and in 1848 elaborately tested the great Parsonstown reflector. In 1846 he visited Hansen at Gotha, Gauss at Göttingen, and Caroline Lucretia Herschel at Hanover; in 1847 spent a month at Pulkowa with Otto Struve, and, returning by Berlin and Hamburg, saw Humboldt, Galle, Repsold, and Rümker. He entered into correspondence with Leverrier in June 1846 about the still unseen planet Neptune, and on 9 July suggested to Professor Challis a plan of search. In the following year he escorted Leverrier to the meeting of the British Association at Oxford. His unjustifiable coldness to John Couch Adams [q.v.] was doubtless due to the embarrassments that followed his accidental yet regrettable omission to pay due attention to the letter in which Adams communicated to him the progress of his Neptune investigation. He wrote on ‘The Figure of the Earth,’ and on ‘Tides and Waves,’ in the ‘Encyclopædia Metropolitana;’ his ‘Report on the Progress of Astronomy,’ drawn up for the British Association in 1832, is still valuable; for his discussion of the ‘Laws of the Tides on the Coasts of Ireland’ (Phil. Trans. 12 Dec. 1844) he was awarded a royal medal by the Royal Society in 1845; he communicated important researches on ancient eclipses to that body in 1853, and to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1857. Airy left a detailed autobiography a portrait is prefixed; A. Chapman, Britain’s first professional astronomer, IN Yearbook of astronomy 1991 pp185-205. He sent 128 tidal letters, chiefly to Beaufort, Whewell, Yelland, Roberton, May, Lubbock, Colby, Bunt, de Morgan and Sherrif; and received 96 chiefly from Beaufort, Whewell, Yelland, Bunt and May. Alderson, Sir James (1794-1882), physician, was born in Hul. He received his early education at the school of the Rev. George Lee, unitarian minister of Hull. While still in his teens he went out to Portugal as clerk in the army commissariat, before the conclusion of the Peninsular war. On his return to England he entered Pembroke College, Cambridge (1818), of which house he was afterwards made a fellow. He took his B.A. degree in 1822 as sixth wrangler; M.A. 1825, and the following year he was incorporated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, as M.B. The degree of M.D., Oxford, followed in 1829. On the death of his father he succeeded to a large and lucrative practice in Hull and the neighbouring parts of Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. Sir James, who was a fellow of the Royal Society, contributed occasional papers to their ‘Transactions’. He wrote1 tidal letter. Andrews, T. 2f Argent, J. 1t Atkinson, Thomas (fl. 1833) of His Majesty's Dockyard, Portsmouth, he received one tidal letter. Auber, P. of the East India Company. Bache, Alexander Dallas (1806-1867): was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, a physicist becoming superintendent of the United States Coast Survey in 1843 until his death. Sent 33 tidal letters, chiefly to Gordon, Pourtales and Whewell; he received 44 letters, chiefly from Pourtales, Gordon and Meech. Baily, Francis (1774-1844), an eminent astronomer, was born in Newbury, Berkshire. Placed in a London mercantile house at the age of fourteen, the acquaintance of Priestley developed his native taste for experimental inquiries. But though known amongst his young companions as the ‘Philosopher of Newbury,’ love of adventure was as yet stronger in him than love of science, and his seven years' apprenticeship had no sooner expired than he sailed for America 21 Oct. 1795. The narrative of his experiences as a traveller is contained in an extremely curious ‘Journal of a Tour in Unsettled Parts of North America in 1796 and 1797,’ edited by Professor De Morgan in 1856, twelve years after the death of the author. They include two narrow escapes from shipwreck, a voyage in an open boat down the Ohio and Mississippi from Pittsburg to New Orleans, and a return journey to New York across nearly 2,000 miles of ‘wilderness’ uninhabited except by Indians. With characteristic thoroughness, Baily now engaged in commercial pursuits.
He wrote two works of standard authority, the ‘Doctrine of Interest and Annuities analytically investigated and explained’ (1808), and the ‘Doctrine of Life-Annuities and Assurances analytically investigated and practically explained’ (1810).
His divergence into a new field was marked by the publication, in 1812, of ‘A New Chart of
History’. The preparation of chronological tables for an ‘Epitome of Universal History’ (published 1813 in 2 vols. 8vo) led to his first essay in astronomy. A paper ‘On the Solar Eclipse which is said to have been predicted by Thales,’ read before the Royal Society 14 March 1811 (Phil. Trans. ci. 220), proved him a skilled computist; but the date assigned, 30 Sept. 610 b.c., was shown by his own appended investigation of the eclipse of Agathocles (15 Aug. 310 b.c.) to be insecure, and was corrected by Sir George Airy, with the aid of improved lunar tables, to 28 May 585 (Phil. Trans. cxliii. 193; Mem. R.A.S. xxvi. 139).
The establishment of the Astronomical Society formed, in Sir John Herschel's words, ‘a chief and deciding epoch in his life.’ He was one of the fourteen who met at the Freemasons' Tavern 12 Jan. 1820, and constituted themselves a corporate body with that title. And on Baily, as its acting secretary during the first three years of its existence, devolved the chief labour of its organisation. By his judicious action the society was, in 1834, put in possession of spacious apartments in Somerset House, and on the death of George IV raised to an equal footing with the Royal Society on the visiting board of the Royal Observatory. He was four times elected its president (for terms of two years), eleven times vice-president, and invariably sat on the council. The perusal, in 1832, of Flamsteed's autograph letters to his ex-assistant, Abraham Sharp, lent to Baily by his neighbour, Mr. E. Giles, induced him to examine the entire mass of his manuscripts, which had lain mouldering for sixty years in the library at Greenwich. He soon came to the conclusion that Flamsteed's character, both personal and scientific, had been grievously misrepresented, and wrote to the Duke of Sussex, president of the board of visitors of the Royal Observatory, suggesting the propriety of a republication of the ‘British Catalogue,’ with such selections from authentic documents as might serve to rectify prevalent errors in regard to the conduct and motives of its author. The reform of the ‘Nautical Almanac’ was another of the benefits derived by science from his zeal. It was rendered inevitable by his strictures on its deficiencies in 1819, 1822, and 1829, and the admiralty having, on the death of the superintendent, Dr. Thomas Young, 10 May 1829, submitted the matter to the Astronomical Society, Baily formed one of the deliberating committee, and drew up the report upon which the present National Ephemeris was modelled (Mem. R. A. S. iv. 449). The general result of 20,000 experiments gave 1/289.48 for the ellipticity of the earth, showing a most satisfactory agreement with Sabine's of 1/288.40. The most arduous and conspicuous labour of his life has still to be adverted to. This was the repetition of the ‘Cavendish experiment’ for measuring the density of the earth. The principle of this research depends upon the comparison between the observed attractive effects of masses of ascertained weight and density with the known force of gravity at the earth's surface; but its adequate execution is attended by difficulties of the most baffling description. A remark made by Professor De Morgan at the council-table of the Royal Astronomical Society occasioned the appointment, in 1835, of a committee to consider the matter; but no progress was made until Baily offered his services in 1837, and the treasury granted 500l. towards expenses. The operation, conducted in an upper room of his house, twelve feet square, lasted from October 1838 to May 1842, and resulted in establishing, within narrow limits of error, that our globe is composed of materials, on an average, 5.66 times as heavy as water (Mem. R. A. S. xiv. table vii.) Nevertheless, in spite of precautions incredibly minute, the experiments were vitiated during eighteen months by an unknown cause of error. Ultimate success seemed scarcely to be hoped for, yet Baily resolved to persevere; and to this determination, Lord Wrottesley remarked (Mem. R. A. S. xv. 280), it is due that his memoir (occupying the entire fourteenth volume of Mem. R. A. S.) ‘is hardly less valuable as a lesson upon the nature and use of the torsion pendulum in measuring small forces than as a determination of the mean density of the earth.’ It was at length suggested by Professor Forbes that the anomalies in question might be due to the radiation of heat from the leaden masses employed to deflect the pendulum, and proposed gilding both them and the torsion-box. The remedy was completely successful; and the process begun de novo in January 1841 was conducted to a successful issue. The printed observations numbered 2,153 (besides upwards of a thousand rejected as untrustworthy), varying in duration from ten to thirty minutes. This memorable labour was rewarded with the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal (of which Baily thus for the second time became the recipient) 10 Feb. 1843. The abilities of Francis Baily were not of the highest order. As a mathematician his range was a limited one. He never mastered the refinements of modern analysis, and was frequently indebted to the aid of Professors Airy and De Morgan in working out his investigations. Nor was his mind visited by any of the luminous inspirations of genius. Yet his life presents an almost unique example of laborious usefulness to science. More than to any single individual, the rapid general advance of practical astronomy in the British islands was due to him. To clear discernment of the precise wants of his time he joined untiring activity in supplying them. His organising energy was guided by a tact which rendered it irresistible. Add a rare faculty of order and concentration, with a perfect knowledge of and complete mastery over his powers, and the sources of his almost unparalleled effectiveness as a worker become in some degree apparent. Besides the special tasks executed by him with astonishing thoroughness, precision, and rapidity, he took a leading part in the general conduct of scientific affairs. He was unfailing at the annual visitation of the Royal Observatory during twenty-seven years. He succeeded Babbage in 1839 as permanent trustee of the British Association, and had belonged to its council for two years previously. He aided in the foundation (in 1830) and became vice-president of the Geographical Society, acted, during considerable periods, as vice-president and treasurer of the Royal Society, generally held a seat on the council, and rarely missed one of its meetings from the date of his election as fellow, 22 Feb. 1821. Scientific distinctions were showered upon him. He was a fellow of the Linnean and Geological societies, a corresponding member of the Institute of France, of the Academies of Berlin, Naples, and Palermo, and was enrolled on the lists of the American and Royal Irish Academies. He wrote 3 tidal letters. Bald, William 1f Ballingell (fl. 1852) stockeeper at Bermuda Yard. He sent one tidal letter. Barlow, Peter (1776-1862), mathematician, physicist, and optician, was born at Norwich. He began life in an obscure mercantile situation; he then kept a school. From which he was subsequently advanced to that of professor, in the Royal Military Academy. His services to the profession were acknowledged by admission, in 1820, as an honorary member, to the Institution of Civil Engineers. Barlow was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1823, and in 1825 received the Copley medal for his discoveries in magnetism. Somewhat later he was admitted to the Astronomical Society, and sat on the committee for the improvement of the ‘Nautical Almanac’ in 1829-30, and on the council in 1831. He was besides a corresponding member of the Paris, St. Petersburg, and other foreign academies. He wrote1 tidal letter. Barnden, George 1f Barnett, Edward (fl. 1811-1848) Admiral. 1f Barrow, Sir John (1764-1848), secretary of the admiralty, was born at Dragley Beck, a village in the parish of Ulverston. Educated at the Town Bank Grammar School at Ulverston, A son of Robert Walker succeeded to the mastership, and helped young Barrow to his first step in life by recommending him to assist in the survey of Conishead Priory. He married Anna Maria Trüter, and in the year 1800 bought a house looking on Table Mountain, where he intended to settle ‘as a country gentleman of South Africa.’ In 1817 Barrow published an account of the movement of icebergs into the Atlantic, and proposed to Lord Melville a plan of two voyages for the discovery of the North-west Passage. In 1821 the honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred on him by the university of Edinburgh. More than any other man not actually employed in its operations, he had contributed to the splendid results obtained in the nineteenth century. Point Barrow, Cape Barrow, and Barrow Straits, in the polar seas, attest the estimation in which his friendship was held by the explorers of his time. He wrote 6 tidal letters. Basset J. 1f Bax, Henry B. 1f Bayfield, Henry Wolsey (1795-1885) was born in Hull and died in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. He entered the navy at 11 and assisted Owen in 1816, when he began his surveying career. In 1826 he persuaded the Admiralty to re-survey the St. Lawrence, which occupied his to 1841. During the survey he encountered John Audubon. When he then established observatories; his last major undertaking was a survey of Halifax harbour in 1852-3. He devised the 'The St. Lawrence Pilot' & 'The Nova Scotia Pilot'. He became an Admiral in 1867. 2f Bayley, J. 1f Beacham J. W. 1f Beaufort,
Sir Francis (1774-1857), rear-admiral and hydrographer to the navy. He entered the navy in June
1787. For some years after this he was unemployed at sea, and in 1803-4 assisted his brother-in-law, Mr. Edgeworth, in establishing a line of telegraphs from Dublin to Galway. In June 1805 he was appointed to the command of the Woolwich, armed store-ship, in which, during the presence of the fleet off Buenos Ayres in 1807, he made an accurate survey of the entrance to the Rio de la Plata. On 30 May 1810 he was advanced to post rank, and appointed to the Frederiksteen frigate. During the two following years he was employed in the archipelago, principally in surveying the coast of
Karamania. Beaufort was badly wounded in the hip. The account of this survey and exploration he afterwards published in an interesting volume entitled ‘Karamania, or a brief description of the South Coast of Asia Minor, and of the Remains of Antiquity’ (8vo, 1817); and, it is said, refused to accept any payment for the manuscript on the ground that the materials of the work were acquired in his majesty's service and in the execution of a public duty. For many years after his return to England he was engaged in constructing the charts of his survey, with his own hand, and the charts were engraved directly from his drawings, as sent in to the Hydrographic Office. In 1829 he was appointed hydrographer to the navy, and during the twenty-six years through which he held that post rendered his name almost a synonym in the navy for hydrography and nautical science. It is still preserved by the general introduction of the scale of wind force, and the tabulated system of weather registration in common use both afloat and ashore. These expedients occurred to him when he was captain of the Woolwich, 1805, and wished to render the ship's log at once more concise and more comprehensive. In April 1835 he was a member of a commission for inquiring into the laws under which pilots were appointed, governed, and paid; and in January 1845 of another commission for inquiring into the state of harbours, shores, and rivers of the United Kingdom. On 1 Oct. 1846, according to an order in council just issued, he was made a rear-admiral on the retired list; and on 29 April 1848 he was made a K.C.B. in acknowledgment of his civil services as hydrographer, which post he continued to hold almost till the last.
A portrait was placed in the Painted Hall at Greenwich Hospital. His scientific work was solely in connection with his
office. He was for many years engaged in his own house in preparing the extensive Atlas published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge, to execute which he rose daily between five and six. He was a fellow of the Royal and Royal Astronomical Societies, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a corresponding member of the Institute of France and of the United States Naval Lyceum. Beautemps-Beaupre, Charles Francois (1766-1855), French hydrographer. He was appointed first geographical engineer to the surveying expedition despatched by the French government under Admiral Bruny D'Entrecasteaux, in search of the unfortunate La Perouse. The construction of the atlas of this voyage, afforded M. Beaupre an opportunity for improving the methods of hydrographical surveying, and the 39 charts which it contains were at the time unequalled. Under the first Napoleon, M. Beaupre was constantly employed in surveying the rivers and ports of the North Sea, and in examining the Adriatic and other coasts to which the views of the Emperor were directed. But the great work which occupied him for twenty years, and which he had the satisfaction of being enabled to complete, was "Le Pilote Francaise", in six atlas-folio volumes, embracing a coast-line of 466 leagues, and including 613 sheets of charts and plans. Commencing his career under the celebrated geographer Nicolas Buache, Beaupre embarked as Hydrographic Engineer in 1791. Returning to France in 1796, he was appointed Chief Engineer to the Hydrographic Office; and, for some years, employed in the compilation of charts, the superiority of his work obtained him the attention of Napoleon; who entrusted to him numerous more surveys. After the Restoration of 1816, he undertook his great work of the survey of the Atlantic coasts of France. http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/Fullimage.asp?Letter=B&Title=Beautemps-Beaupre&ID=AUTAS001124074030 Becher, Alexander Bridport (1796-1876) Rear Admiral. With the exception of the time served in the Fairy and Mastiff, Capt. Becher was employed, from May, 1823, to 1864, in the Hydrographic Department of the Admiralty, where the original charts were arranged and classified by him upon a system which renders them accessible to immediate reference. He gave the charts the same numbers as the shelf on which they were kept. While in this office, he employed much of his time in literary pursuits, and in 1832 brought out the first number of the Nautical Magazine, managing and editing it subsequently for a period of 39 years. In the early days of the Nautical, an annual grant was made by Government to assist to keep it up, so imperfect were the hydrographical records of those days. The sum of £50 a year was paid out of Naval Funds, and £50 a year out of the Mercantile Marine Fund. At the death of Admiral Becher, however, the Nautical Magazine changed hands, the Government subscription having previously been withdrawn. Chapter on Hydrography in the Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry. Corresponded with Whewell 4f 1t during 1832-6. Beechey, Frederick William (1796-1856), rear-admiral and geographer, entered the navy in July 1806 under the direct patronage of Lord St. Vincent, and afterwards of Sir Sidney Smith. In January 1821 Beechey during the next two years was employed on the survey of the north coast of Africa. He married Charlotte Stapleton. In September 1835 he was appointed to the Sulphur, for the survey of part of the coast of South America; but his health failing, he was compelled to come home in the autumn of 1836. In the following year he was appointed to the survey of the coast of Ireland, and, in different steam-vessels, continued on that duty until 1847. From 1850 till death he was superintendent of the marine department of the Board of Trade, occasionally contributing papers to the Royal and other societies, of which he was a fellow. In 1855 he was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society. Besides, he was the author of two Reports of Observations on the Tides in the Irish Sea and English Channel (Phil. Trans. 1848, pp. 105-16, 1851, pp. 703-18). He wrote 2 tidal letters. Belcher, Sir Edward (1799-1877), admiral, entered the navy in 1812. He was made lieutenant on 21 July 1818, and after continuous, though unimportant service, was in 1825 appointed as assistant surveyor to the Blossom, then about to sail for the Pacific Ocean and Behring Straits [see Beechey, Frederick William] on a voyage of discovery which lasted over more than three years. He was made commander 16 March 1829, and from May 1830 to September 1833 commanded the Ætna, employed on the survey of parts of the west and north coasts of Africa, and through the winter of 1832 in the Douro, for the protection of British interests during the struggle between the parties of Doms Pedro and Miguel. The results of the Ætna's work were afterwards embodied in the admiralty charts and sailing directions for the rivers Douro and Gambia. On paying off the Ætna, Belcher was employed for some time on the home survey, principally in the Irish Sea, and in November 1836 was appointed to the Sulphur, surveying ship, then on the west coast of South America, from which Captain Beechey had been obliged to invalid. During the next three years the Sulphur was busily employed on the west coast of both North and South America, and in the end of 1839 received orders to return to England by the western route. After visiting several of the island groups in the South Pacific, and making such observations as time permitted, Belcher arrived at Singapore in October 1840. Published his ‘Narrative of a Voyage round the World performed in H.M.S. Sulphur during the years 1836-42’ (2 vols. 8vo). In November 1842 he was appointed to the Samarang for the survey of the coast of China, which the recent war and treaty had opened to our commerce. More pressing necessities, however, changed her field of work to Borneo, the Philippine Islands, and Formosa, and on these and neighbouring coasts Belcher was employed for nearly five years, returning to England on the last day of 1847. In 1848 he published ‘Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Samarang’ (2 vols. 8vo), and in 1852 was appointed to the command of an expedition to the Arctic in search of Sir John Franklin. Besides the works already noted, he published in 1835 ‘A Treatise on Nautical Surveying,’ long a standard work on the subject, though now obsolete; and in 1867 edited Sir W. H. Smyth's ‘Sailors' Word Book,’ 8vo. He wrote 2 tidal letters. Tide observations at Otaheite, 1843. Bennet,
John Joseph (1801-1876), botanist. He received his early education at Enfield, having as schoolfellows Keats, Thirlwall, and John Reeve the actor, the latter doing all Bennett's fighting in return for help in arithmetic. Leaving school, Bennett became a student at Middlesex Hospital, passed in due time, and settled in a house in Bulstrode Street, Cavendish Square, with his brother, Edward Turner Bennett, four years his senior. Bennett, Thomas F. 1f Bentinck, C. Bevan, B. of Leighton Buzzard, wrote 15 tidal letters, mostly to Wollaston and Young. Blackwood, John (fl. 1843-7) of Roggan Hall, Blubberhouse Moor, Yorkshire. Was a captain who made tidal observations for the Hydrographic Office in Eastern Australia in 1843. Of Mr. Evans, the Master, he wrote: 'a peculiarly intelligent and observant young man'. He wrote letters to Whewell and Beaufort. Blunt, W. Bowditch, Nathaniel, of Otis Place, Boston MA. Eldest of four children of the nautical textbook writer of the same name. Together, they wrote 1 tidal letter. Braaksma H. 1f Brande, William Thomas
(1788-1866) chemist, and editor of the ‘Dictionary of Science and Art,’ was born
in Arlington Street, St. James's, on 11 Feb. 1788. He was educated in private
schools at Kensington and at Westminster. Bright, Richard (fl.1835-7) of Ham Green-on-Avon, wrote five letters to the Board of Longitude. Bright, Sarah (fl. 1837) sister of Richard, wrote two letters to the Board of Longitude. Bronwin B. 1f Brown, Alix, of Aberdeen and Liverpool wrote 2 tidal letters. Brown, Joseph 1f Brown T. 1t |