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Mackie to Sharp Mackie, David 1f Maclear, Sir Thomas (1794-1879), astronomer, he was born at Newtown Stewart, co. Tyrone. Having studied in Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospitals, and passed distinguished examinations, he was admitted in 1815 a member of the Royal College of Surgeons. He married Mary Pearse. The Astronomical Society lent him in 1829 the Wollaston telescope for the purpose of observing a series of occultations of Aldebaran, calculated by himself, and he set it up with a thirty-inch transit in a small observatory in his garden at Biggleswade (Memoirs of Royal Astr. Society, vi. 147). Succeeding Thomas Henderson in 1833 as royal astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, he arrived there on 5 Jan. 1834, ten days before Sir John Herschel, whose zealous co-operator and attached friend he became. Much care was devoted by him to the collection of meteorological, magnetic, and tidal data; and he set on foot in 1860 the communication of time-signals by electricity to Port Elizabeth and Simon's Town. Lighthouses were through his aid established in South Africa. He sat on a commission of weights and measures. African exploration interested him keenly. Livingstone was his intimate friend, and was instructed by him in the use of the sextant. Maclear visited England, Paris, and Brussels in 1859, and was knighted in June 1860. He wrote 1 tidal letter and received 1. Macrae, John 1f Main, Robert 1808-1878, astronomer, brother of Thomas John Main, was born at Upnor in Kent on 12 July 1808. He was educated at Portsea, became assistant-master in the grammar school at Bishop's Waltham, Hampshire, and saved out of his stipend funds for a university career. Having obtained a foundation scholarship in Queens' College, Cambridge, he graduated as sixth wrangler in 1834, was elected to a fellowship, took orders, and proceeded M.A. in 1837. In 1835 he was appointed chief assistant at the Royal Observatory under Sir George Airy, with whom he admirably co-operated during twenty-five years. Important works were distinguished in February 1858 with the gold medal of the Astronomical Society. Main's membership of that body dated from 1836; he served for thirty-nine years on the council, and acted successively as its secretary and president. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1860. He re-edited in 1859 Herschel's ‘Manual of Scientific Enquiry.’ Main married in 1838 a sister of Professor Kelland of Edinburgh, and left three sons. He died at the Radcliffe Observatory, after a short illness, on 9 May 1878. Besides being a fair classical scholar, he read fluently nine modern languages. He sent two tidal letters and received two. Malcolm, Sir Charles (1782-1851), vice-admiral, was born at Burnfoot in Dumfriesshire. Personally he entered the navy in 1795 on board the Fox, then commissioned by his brother, Pulteney, with whom he went out to the East Indies, and whom he followed to the Suffolk. The introduction to and establishment of steam navigation in the Red Sea were largely due to his exertions (Low, ii. 66). Malcolm was twice married: first, to his cousin Magdalene Pasley; and secondly to Elmira Riddell Shaw. He wrote 1 tidal letter. Malcolm, Sir Pultney (1768-1838), admiral, was born at Douglan, near Langholm. He married Clementina Elphinstone. He received 1 tidal letter. Martin, K. B. Harbour Master at Ramsgate. Martin, Sir Thomas Byam (1773-1854) admiral of the fleet, born 25 July 1773, was third son of Sir Henry Martin, bart. (d. 1794), for many years naval commissioner at Portsmouth, and afterwards comptroller of the navy. Martin's personal connection with the navy began in August 1785, when he was entered at the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth. On 2 Jan. 1815 he was nominated a K.C.B., and a few days later was appointed deputy-comptroller of the navy. In 1816 he became comptroller, which office he held till the re-organisation of the navy board in 1831. From 1818 to 1831 he sat in parliament as member for Plymouth. On 12 Aug. 1819 he was made a vice-admiral, a G.C.B. 3 March 1830, admiral 22 July 1830, vice-admiral of the United Kingdom in 1847, and admiral of the fleet 13 Oct. 1849. He died at Portsmouth on 21 Oct. 1854. Sir William Hotham [q.v.] recorded that ‘his capacities for business and thorough knowledge of the state of the navy marked him as a fit man to be at the head of its civil department. He added to a strong understanding and quick perception great personal application and activity, and transacted arduous business without any trouble to himself and satisfactorily to others. He married Catherine, daughter of Captain Robert Fanshawe, for many years naval commissioner at Plymouth, and had issue three daughters and three sons. There is a portrait of Sir Thomas in the United Service Club. May, Charles. Quaker. 8f 10t May, Nicholas, 2 tidal letters from. Melvill, Edward 2f Melvill, Sir James Cosmo (1792-1861) Last secretary of the East India Company. Metcalfe, Charles Theophilus, Baron Metcalfe (1785-1846), provisional governor-general of India, born at the Lecture House, Calcutta, on 30 Jan. Miller, William Hallowes (1801-1880), mineralogist, born 6 April, at Velindre. After receiving his earlier education at private schools, he proceeded to St. John's College, Cambridge, and graduated as fifth wrangler in 1826. He was elected to a college fellowship in 1829, and to the professorship of mineralogy in 1832. In accordance with the statutes he proceeded in 1841 to the degree of M.D. in order to retain his fellowship, which, however, he vacated by marriage with Harriet Susan Minty in 1844. They had two sons and four daughters, but one of the former and two of the latter died before their father. An occasional visit to the continent, often more or less on scientific business, but sometimes extended to a holiday trip in the Eastern Alps, alone interrupted the round of Miller's daily work in his university. A diligent student and lover of science, with a memory singularly accurate and retentive, he possessed an exceptionally wide knowledge of natural philosophy; but it was in crystallography, a branch of his special science, that his great reputation was won. He received the honorary degrees of LL.D. from Dublin in 1865, of D.C.L. from Oxford in 1876, and was re-elected a fellow of his old college in 1874. He was admitted into the Royal Society in 1838, was foreign secretary from 1856 to 1873, and was awarded a royal medal in 1870. He was a knight of the order of St. Maurice and St. Lazare in Italy, of the order of Leopold in Belgium, and a corresponding member of many foreign societies, including the French Academy. In 1876 his health began to fail; he had a slight stroke of paralysis in the autumn, and after a slow decline of the vital powers he died on 20 May 1880. Before the work on crystallography mentioned above Miller had published brief but valuable text-books on hydrostatics and hydrodynamics. He contributed largely to scientific publications, no less than 45 papers appearing in the ‘Royal Society's Catalogue.’ He received one tidal letter. Moll, Professor Gerard of Utrecht (1785-1838). Visited the Hydrographical Office on the 10th and 11th September 1835. Wrote, On the alleged decline of science in England by a foreigner, 1831, which was in direct response to Francis Bailey's assertion. 5 tidal letters with Whewell. Gerard Moll (also known as Gerrit Moll a common Dutch name) - born Jan 18, 1785, Amsterdam - died Jan 17, 1838, Amsterdam - was the brilliant son of a merchant in Amsterdam. On june 28, 1832 Gerard Moll measured noise of guns and he was the first to measure the speed of sound in air (at 21 degrees C, 300 meters per second), build on the wave-theory postulated by Christian Huygens 150 years before. He was a great supporter of experimental science, useful knowledge and cooperation with amateur-scientists in order to find out the regularity of scientic observations both in astronomy and navigation. Professor of Mathematics, Physics and Astronomy, and Director of the Utrecht Observatory. Mudge, William (d. 1837) Commander RN. He begun survey work, in Africa, when a lieutenant in 1821. He died on the Irish survey and was related to General Mudge of the Ordnance Survey. He received 5 tidal letters from Beaufort. Murchison, Sir R. I. Nelson, Capt. 1t Newman, John 2f Oshea, Eliza Maria, wrote 5 tidal letters to Hind. Orlebar, Professor A. B. (fl. 1845-1860), M.A., Inspector of Schools. Worked in Bombay during 1845, and then became an ordinary member of the Philosophical Institute of Victoria in 1857, and of the Royal Society of Victoria in 1860. Page, Fred 1f Palmer,Henry R., of London Docks and designer of a tide gauge. He received 3 tidal letters. Parker, H., Secretary to the Board of Longitude, received 1 tidal letter. Parry, Sir William Edward (1790-1855), rear-admiral and arctic explorer, was born at Bath. Employed during the three years 1810-3 in protecting the Spitzbergen whale fishery, Parry paid much attention to the study and practice of astronomical observations, and constructed several charts of places on the coast of Norway, and of Balta Sound in the Shetland Islands, for which he received the thanks of the admiralty. In 1821 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society; and with the officers and men of the expedition, he received the parliamentary grant previously offered as a reward for those who should first pass the meridian of 110° W. within the arctic circle. In 1825 he was confirmed as hydrographer to the admiralty. He married Isabella Louisa Stanley. He married for a second time Catherine Edwards Hankinson. Parry's portrait is in the museum of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich. He received 3 and sent 3 tidal letters. Peirce, William 1f Phillips, John (1800-1874), geologist, was born at Marden in Wiltshire on 25 Dec. The uncle then took charge of the boy, and at once initiated him in geology. In his eleventh year he was sent to a school at Holt Spa in Wiltshire. Here he was active in games and diligent in class, and when he left, some four years later, he carried away a fair knowledge of Latin, French, and mathematics, with the rudiments of Greek and German, and a certain proficiency in drawing and practical mechanics. The next year was spent with Benjamin Richardson, rector of Farleigh, near Bath, a man of wide knowledge and an ardent geologist, to whose good influence he always expressed himself deeply indebted. Then he joined his uncle in London, just about the time when the latter published his geological map of England, and had undertaken to prepare a series of county maps similarly coloured. Smith, in fact, had now devoted himself to that study which proved ‘so fatal to his prosperity, though so favourable to his renown.’ Of this epoch in his life John Phillips afterwards wrote: ‘In all this contest for knowledge, under difficulties of no ordinary kind, I had my share. From the hour I entered his house in London, and for many years after he quitted it, we were never separated in act or thought ¼ and thus my mind was moulded on his.’
In 1831 the British Association held its first meeting at York, and Phillips took the leading part in the work of organisation. In the following year he became its assistant secretary, and held this office for twenty-seven years. In 1834 he was appointed professor of geology at King's College, London, where he delivered an annual course of lectures, but continued to reside at York till 1840, when he received an appointment on the geological survey. This he held till 1844, when he quitted London for Dublin, to become professor of geology at Trinity College. Here he remained till 1853, when he succeeded Hugh Strickland as deputy at Oxford for Professor William Buckland. On the death of the latter in 1856, he became ‘reader in geology,’ and at a later date was constituted professor. When the new museums were built at Oxford in 1857, he was appointed curator, and occupied the official residence. He was keeper of the Ashmolean Museum from 1854 to 1870.
Plana, M. 1t Pond, John (1767-1836), astronomer-royal, was born in London. His keenness, in astronomy, was shown by the detection, when about fifteen, of errors in the Greenwich observations. At sixteen he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he devoted himself to chemistry; but he was obliged by ill-health to leave the university, and went abroad, visiting Portugal, Malta, Constantinople, and Egypt, making astronomical observations at his halting-places. About 1798 he settled at Westbury in Somerset, and erected there an altazimuth instrument, of two and a half feet diameter, which became known as the ‘Westbury circle’ (see Phil. Trans. xcvi. 424). His observations with it in 1800-1, ‘On the Declinations of some of the Principal Fixed Stars,’ communicated to the Royal Society on 26 June 1806 (ib. p. 420), gave decisive proof of deformation through age in the Greenwich quadrant (Bird's), and rendered inevitable a complete re-equipment of the Royal Observatory. Pond was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 26 Feb. 1807. He married in the same year, and fixed his abode in London, occupying himself with practical astronomy. Troughton was his intimate friend, and Pond superintended, in his workshop, the construction of several instruments of unprecedented perfection. Dr. Nevil Maskelyne, the fifth astronomer-royal, recommended him as his successor to the council of the Royal Society; and Sir Humphry Davy, who had visited him at Westbury in 1800, brought his merits to the notice of the prince-regent. As the result he was appointed astronomer-royal in February 1811, with an augmented salary of 600l. He substituted in 1821 a mercury-horizon for the plumb-line and spirit-level (ib. cxiii. 35), and introduced in 1825 the system of observing the same objects alternately by direct and reflected vision, which, improved by Airy, is still employed (Memoirs Roy. Astr. Society, ii. 499). Pond received in 1817 the Lalande prize from the Paris Academy of Sciences, of which he was a corresponding member; and the Copley medal in 1823 for his various astronomical papers. He joined the Astronomical Society immediately after its foundation. Directed by the House of Commons in 1816 to determine the length of the seconds pendulum, he requested and obtained the cooperation of a committee of the Royal Society. He was a member of the board of longitude, and attended diligently at the sittings in 1829-30 of the Astronomical Society's committee on the ‘Nautical Almanac,’ of which publication he superintended the issues for 1832 and 1833. A translation by Pond of Laplace's ‘Système du Monde’ was published in 1809. He wrote 1 tidal letter. Raper, Henry (1799-1859), admiral. He married Miss Craig. He wrote 1 tidal letter. Reid, Sir William (1791-1858), major-general royal engineers, and colonial governor, was born at Kinglassie. Reid was educated at Musselburgh and at the Edinburgh Academy. He entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, in 1806, and before obtaining a commission he was sent to learn practical surveying under Colonel William Mudge [q.v.]. The disastrous effect of the hurricane of 1831 directed Reid's attention to the subject of storms. In his researches he was materially assisted by the previous labours of Mr. William C. Redfield of New York, who had, in a paper to the ‘American Journal of Science’ in 1831, demonstrated that the hurricanes of the American coast were whirlwinds moving on curved tracts with considerable velocity. Reid's correspondence with Redfield in three folio volumes was presented to the library of Yale University, U.S.A., by John H. Redfield. Reid set himself to confirm and extend Redfield's view by collating the log-books of British men-of-war and merchantmen. He also collected data in order to corroborate the theory that south of the equator, in accordance with the regularity evinced in all natural law, storms would be found to move in a directly contrary direction. In 1838 the result of his scientific labour was published in London in ‘An Attempt to develop the Law of Storms by means of Facts, arranged according to Place and Time, and hence to point out a Cause for the Variable Winds.’ The volume was illustrated by charts and woodcuts (2nd edit., with additions, 1841; 3rd edit. 1850). The work laid down, for the guidance of seamen, those broad and general rules which are known as the ‘law of storms.’ The announcement of this law was received with the greatest interest by the scientific world, and the book went through many editions and has been translated into many languages, including Chinese. In January 1839, in which year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, Reid was appointed governor of the Bermuda Islands. He died at his residence, 117 (now 93) Gloucester Terrace, Hyde Park, London. He married Sarah Bolland. Reid was a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers and of many learned societies and institutions of various countries. His diplomas, with all his private papers, were destroyed in the fire at the Pantechnicon, Baker Street, London, in 1874. A monument was erected to his memory by the people of the Bermudas in the grounds surrounding the public buildings at Hamilton. It is an obelisk of grey granite, with a medallion bust and inscription. Reid's name is also recorded in the royal engineers' memorial in Rochester Cathedral to the officers who served in the Peninsular war. An engraving was published by Graves of Pall Mall, London, of a portrait of Reid a copy of which hangs in the mess of the royal engineers at Chatham. He wrote 1 tidal letter. Rennie, George (1791-1866), civil engineer, brother of Sir John Rennie [q.v.], was born in the parish of Christchurch, Blackfriars Road, London. He was educated at Isleworth, and was subsequently sent to St. Paul's School and to the university of Edinburgh. In 1811 he entered his father's office, where many great works were in progress. In 1818, on the recommendation of Sir Joseph Banks and James Watt, he was appointed inspector of machinery and clerk of the irons (i.e. dies) at the royal mint, which post he held for nearly eight years. On the death of his father in 1821 he entered into partnership with his younger brother John [see Rennie, Sir John], and for many years they were engaged in completing the vast undertakings originated by the elder Rennie. He was much interested in the screw-propeller, and his firm built the engines for the Archimedes, in which Sir Francis Pettit Smith's screw was tried. Subsequently, in 1840, the firm built for the admiralty the Dwarf, the first vessel in the British navy propelled by a screw. In 1822 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society. He also presented papers to the British Association and to the Institution of Civil Engineers, of which body he was elected a member in 1841. He married Margaret Anne Jackson. He wrote 6 tidal letters, mostly to Whewell. Rennie, Sir John (1794-1874), civil engineer, brother of George Rennie [q.v.], was born at 27 Stamford Street, Blackfriars Road, London, on 30 Aug. 1794. He was educated by Dr. Greenlaw at Isleworth, and afterwards by Dr. Charles Burney at Greenwich. He subsequently entered his father's manufactory in Holland Street, Blackfriars Road, where he acquired a practical knowledge of his profession. In 1819 he went abroad for the purpose of studying the great engineering works on the continent. On the death of his father in 1821 he remained in partnership with his brother George, the civil engineering portion of the business being carried on by him. The most important of his undertakings was the construction of London Bridge, the designs for which had been prepared by his father. The bridge was opened in 1831, when Rennie was knighted, being the first of the profession since Sir Hugh Myddleton to be thus distinguished. As engineer to the admiralty, a post in which he succeeded his father, he completed various works at Sheerness, Woolwich, Plymouth, Ramsgate, and the great breakwater at Plymouth, of which he published an ‘Account’ in 1848. Many years of his life were spent in making additions and alterations to various harbours on different parts of the coast, both in England and in Ireland. He completed the drainage works in the Lincolnshire fens commenced by his father, and, in conjunction with Telford, constructed the Nene outfall near Wisbech (1826-1831). He also restored the harbour of Boston in 1827-8, and made various improvements on the Welland. There is a portrait by James Andrews at the Institution of Civil Engineers, Great George Street, and an engraving appears in his ‘Autobiography.’ He wrote 2 tidal letters. Richardson, Sir John (1787-1865), arctic explorer and naturalist, was born at Nith Place, Dumfries. In 1801 he entered the university of Edinburgh. He graduated M.D. in 1816 (his thesis dealing with yellow fever). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1825, and received the royal medal in 1856. Richardson was thrice married: first to Mary Stiven; second
to Mary Booth; and third to Mary Fletcher. Roberton, Ed. de. He wrote 1 tidal letter and received 6 from Airy. Robertson, N. 1f Roget, Peter Mark (1779-1869) physician and savant, born in Broad Street, Soho, London. He studied mathematics on his own account unaided, and made considerable progress. In 1793 he removed to Edinburgh, where Roget, then fourteen years old, was entered at the university. He entered the medical school of the Edinburgh University in the winter session of the same year, and after recovering in 1797 from an attack of typhus fever, which he caught in the wards of the infirmary, he graduated M.D. on 25 June 1798, being then only nineteen years of age. Meanwhile some of Roget's energy had been devoted to other fields. He always cultivated a native aptitude for mechanics. In 1814 he had contrived a sliding rule, so graduated as to be a measure of the powers of numbers, in the same manner as the scale of Gunter was a measure of their ratios. It is a logo-logarithmic rule, the slide of which is the common logarithmic scale, while the fixed line is graduated upon the logarithms of logarithms. His paper thereon, which also describes other ingenious forms of the instrument, was communicated by Dr. Wollaston to the Royal Society, and read on 17 Nov. 1814. The communication led, on 16 March 1815, to his election as a fellow of the society. On 30 Nov. 1827 he succeeded Sir John Herschel in the office of secretary to the society, retiring in 1849. He not only edited, while secretary, the ‘Proceedings’ both of the society and council, but prepared for publication the abstracts of papers. This labour he performed from 1827 to his retirement. He was father of the Royal Society Club at the time of his death. He was a founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and wrote for its ‘Library of Useful Knowledge’ a series of treatises. Roget was a frequent attendant at the meetings of the British Association for over thirty years. He wrote in 1834 one of the Bridgewater treatises. In 1837 and the subsequent years he took an active part in the establishment of the university of London.
Romilly, Joseph (1791-1864) registrar of the university of Cambridge. He entered at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1809, and proceeded M.A. in 1816. He received 1 tidal letter. Rorie, John James, Lieut. R.N., wrote 1 tidal letter. Ross, Daniel (1812-1854), RN computer, the presumed son of Captain Daniel Ross who died in 1827. (Dawson indicates a Captain Daniel Ross 1807-40 who was also a hydrographer and founder of the Bombay Geographical Society.) Appointed to the Hydrographic Office in June 1835, was paid £1.10.0 per week until 1841 when Beaufort increased it to £3.3.0. During 1851 he received the best of advice from the medical Gentlemen at Haslar, Gosport. When Ross died, still in service at the Hydrographic Office, an unfortunate cripple without the use of his limbs, Beaufort regarded it as a severe loss. He resided in Lambeth. He made three charts. He wrote 44 tidal letters, mostly to Whewell and Beaufort, and received 3. Ross, Sir James Clark (1800-1862), rear-admiral, and Arctic and Antarctic navigator. He married Anne Coulman of Whitgift Hall, in Yorkshire. Ross was elected F.R.S.One picture is in the Franklin Museum at Greenwich, the other in the National Portrait Gallery, London, which also possesses a medallion by Bernard Smith. He wrote 2 and received 1 tidal letter. Russell, Edward, of the Metropolitan Loan Office at 3 Verulam Buildings wrote 11 tidal letters, mostly to Lubbock. Russell, John Scott (1808-1882), civil engineer, was born at Parkhead, near Glasgow. He graduated at Glasgow at the age of sixteen. On the death of Sir John Leslie, professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh, in 1832, he was elected to fill the vacancy temporarily. With the view of improving the forms of vessels, he commenced researches into the nature of waves. He read a paper on this subject before the British Association in 1835, when a committee was appointed to make experiments. During these researches Russell discovered the existence of the wave of translation, and developed the wave-line system of construction of ships. In 1837 he read a paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh ‘On the Laws by which Water opposes Resistance to the Motion of Floating Bodies,’ for which he received the large gold medal of the society, and was elected a member of the council. He was employed at this time as manager of the large shipbuilding works at Greenock subsequently owned by Caird & Co. The Wave, the first vessel constructed on the wave system, was built under his direction in 1835, the Scott Russell in 1836, and the Flambeau and the Fire-King in 1839. His system was employed in the construction of the new fleet of the West India Royal Mail Company, four of the vessels being designed and built by him. Removing to London in 1844, Russell became F.R.S. in 1847 and a member of the Institute of Civil Engineers, of which he was for some time vice-president. Russell published: 3. ‘Very large Ships, their Advantages and Defects,’ &c., London, 1863, 8vo. & 6. ‘The Wave of Translation in the Ocean of Water, Air, and Ether,’ new edition, London, 1885, 8vo. He wrote3 tidal letters. Sabine, Sir Edward (1788-1883), general, royal artillery, and president of the Royal Society, was born in Great Britain Street, Dublin. Sabine was educated at Marlow and at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He returned home, from North America, on 12 Aug. 1816, and devoted himself to his favourite studies: astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and ornithology. Sabine was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1818, and the same year, on the recommendation of the president and council, he was appointed astronomer to the arctic expedition in search of a north-west passage, which sailed in the Isabella under Commander (afterwards Sir) John Ross (1777-1856) [q.v.] and was absent from May to November. Sabine accompanied, in a similar capacity, a second arctic expedition in 1819, which sailed in the Hecla under Lieutenant-commander (afterwards Sir) Edward Parry [q.v.], and was away from May 1819 until November 1820. In 1821 he received the Copley medal of the Royal Society for various communications relating to his researches during the arctic expedition. Sabine was next selected to conduct a series of experiments for determining the variation in different latitudes in the length of the pendulum vibrating seconds, with a view to ascertain the true figure of the earth, a subject which had engaged his attention in the first arctic voyage. Sabine's observations of the magnetic inclination and force at St. Thomas in 1822 were the first made on that island. Utilised as a base of comparison with later observations of the Portuguese, they are important as showing the remarkable secular change which was in progress during the interval. In 1825 Sabine was appointed a joint commissioner with Sir John Herschel to act with a French government commission in determining the precise difference of longitude between the observatories of Paris and Greenwich by means of rocket-signals. The difference of longitude thus found was nine minutes 21×6 seconds. The accepted difference at the present time, by electric signalling, is nine minutes twenty-one seconds. He acted until 1829 as one of the secretaries of the Royal Society. In 1827 and the two following years Sabine made experiments to determine the relative lengths of the seconds pendulum in Paris, London, Greenwich, and Altona, and he afterwards determined the absolute length at Greenwich. On the abolition of the board of longitude in 1828, it was arranged that three scientific advisers of the admiralty should be nominated, the selection being limited to the council of the Royal Society. Sabine, Faraday, and Young were appointed. Sabine's appointment was violently attacked by Charles Babbage in a pamphlet generally denouncing the Royal Society, entitled ‘Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on some of its Causes’ (1830). Sabine did not answer Babbage's unmannerly attack, but contented himself with inserting in the ‘Philosophical Magazine’ for 1830 an explanation on one point upon which particular stress had been laid. The condition of Ireland in 1830 necessitated an increased military establishment, and Sabine was recalled to military duty in that country, where he served for seven years. During this time he continued his pendulum investigations, and in 1834 commenced, in conjunction with Professor Humphrey Lloyd, afterwards provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and Captain (afterwards Sir) James Clark Ross [q.v.], the first systematic magnetic survey ever made of the British Islands. He extended it single-handed to Scotland in 1836, and in conjunction with Lloyd, Ross, and additional observers, in the following year to England. On 22 April 1836 Humboldt wrote to the Duke of Sussex, president of the Royal Society, in reference to a conversation he had recently held in Berlin with Sabine and Lloyd, and urged the establishment throughout the British empire of regular magnetic stations similar to those which, mainly by his influence, had been for some time in operation in Northern Asia. The proposal was reported upon by Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Airey, astronomer royal, and Mr. Samuel Hunter Christie (see Royal Soc. Proc. vol. iii.). A committee on mathematics and physics, appointed in May, of which Sabine, Lloyd, and Lieutenant (afterwards Sir) William Thomas Denison were prominent members, worked out the details, and towards the end of the year a definite official representation was made to government to establish magnetic observatories at selected stations in both hemispheres, and to despatch a naval expedition to the South Antarctic regions to make a magnetical survey of them. In the spring of 1839 the scheme was approved by the government. The fixed observatories were to be established at Toronto in Canada, St. Helena, and the Cape of Good Hope, and at stations to be determined by the East India Company, while other nations were invited to co-operate. Sabine was appointed to superintend the whole, and the observatories began their work in 1840. On 1 Dec. 1845 he was elected foreign secretary of the Royal Society. In 1849 he was awarded one of the gold medals of the society for his papers on terrestrial magnetism. On 30 Nov. 1850 he was elected treasurer to the society. Sabine was elected president of the Royal Society in 1861, and held the office until his resignation in 1871. In 1864 he moved the government of India to undertake at various stations of the great trigonometrical survey, from the sea-level at Cape Cormorin to the lofty tablelands of the Himalayas, the series of pendulum observations which have thrown so much light on the constitution of the earth's crust and local variations of gravity. Sabine was created D.C.L. of Oxford on 20 June 1855, and LL.D. of Cambridge. He was a fellow of the Linnean and the Royal Astronomical societies and many other learned bodies. There is an oil portrait of Sabine in the rooms of the Royal Society. There is also a marble bust of him. In the mess-room of the royal artillery at Woolwich there is a portrait of him, dated 1876. Sabine married Elizabeth Juliana Leeves. She was an accomplished woman, who aided him for more than half a century in his scientific investigations. Her translation of Humboldt's ‘Cosmos,’ in four volumes, was published 1849-58. She also translated ‘The Aspects of Nature’ (1849, 2 vols.) by the same author, Arago's meteorological essays, and ‘Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea’ (1840; 2nd ed. 1844). There was no issue of the marriage. He wrote 1 tidal letter and received 1. Scoresby, William (1789-1857), master-mariner, author, and divine, was born at Cropton, near Whitby. Year after year he made the Greenland voyage with his father. In the autumn of 1806 he entered the university of Edinburgh, where he studied chemistry and natural philosophy. In the course of the voyage of 1807 he made a survey of Balta Sound in the Shetland Isles, and constructed an original chart of it. He married Miss Lockwood, the daughter of a shipbroker of Whitby. He invented an apparatus, which he called a ‘marine diver,’ for obtaining deep-sea temperatures, and by it established for the first time that in the arctic seas the bottom temperatures are higher than the surface. During these years he was continually occupied with the problems of arctic geography, meteorology, and magnetism, and contributed numerous papers to the ‘Proceedings’ of the Wernerian Society. In January 1819 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In May 1819 he moved with his family to Liverpool. In June 1824 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He wrote 2 tidal letters. Sedgwick, Adam (1785-1873) geologist, was born at Dent in the dales of western Yorkshire. He went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. An attack of typhoid fever in the autumn of 1805 nearly proved fatal. He was elected scholar in 1807, and graduated B.A. in 1808, with the place of fifth wrangler. The examiner, who settled the final order of the candidates, is said to have considered Sedgwick the one who showed most signs of inherent power. In 1818 Sedgwick was elected fellow of the Geological Society; he was president in 1831, and received its Wollaston medal in 1851. He was made fellow of the Royal Society in 1830, and gained the Copley medal in 1863. In 1833 he was president of the British
Association. He was made honorary D.C.L. of Oxford in 1860 and honorary LL.D. of Cambridge in 1866. A portrait in oils by Thomas Phillips, R.A., dated 1832, and owned by Mr. John H. Gurney of Norwich, was reproduced for the ‘Life and Letters’ (1890), as was also a fine crayon portrait by Lowes Dickinson, dated 1867, now in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge. Busts of Sedgwick by H. Weekes and Thomas Woolner are in possession of the Geological Society, London, and Trinity College, Cambridge. He wrote 1 tidal letter. Sharp, William (1805-1896), physician, was born at Armley, near Leeds. William Sharp was educated at Wakefield grammar school and Westminster school. In 1826 he obtained the license of the Society of Apothecaries, and in 1827 he was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons of England. A natural bent for science, fostered by his education at the Sorbonne, led him to establish the Bradford Philosophical Society, of which he was the first president. In 1839 he read an important paper at the Birmingham meeting of the British Association, in which he advocated the formation of local museums, each collection being limited to objects of interest belonging to the town in which it was formed. This paper led to his election as fellow of the Royal Society on 7 May 1840. He left Bradford in 1843 and lived at Hull for the succeeding four years, practising his profession, and giving two winter courses of lectures on chemistry at the Hull and East Riding school of medicine. After spending some time in travel, he removed to Rugby, so that his sons might attend the school there. At Rugby Sharp's energy in the promotion of science led to the establishment of science teaching as an integral part of the curriculum of the Rugby school, and Sharp was appointed in 1849 its ‘reader in natural philosophy.’ A portrait is now in the possession of Mrs. Sharp at Horton House, Rugby. Sharp married Emma Scott. He wrote 1 tidal letter.
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