Herbert Hall Turner

Herbert Hall Turner FRS
Born	(1861-08-13)13 August 1861 Leeds, England
Died	20 August 1930(1930-08-20) (aged 69) Stockholm, Sweden
Awards	Bruce Medal (1927)
Scientific career
Fields	Astronomy seismology

Herbert Hall Turner

Biography

Herbert Hall Turner was educated at the

His 1897 Royal Society candidature citation read:[5]

Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society. Was Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich 1884-1894. Author of various papers among which may be mentioned:-

• "On the correction of the Equilibrium theory of tides for the continents" (with G H Darwin, Proc.RS. vol lx)
• "Report of observations of total solar eclipse of Aug 29 1886" (Phil Trans. vol 180A),
• "On Mr Edgeworth's method of reducing observations relating to several quantities" (Phil. Mag. Vol24).
• "On Mr Leath's Intersects" (Monthly Notices R.A.S. vol xlvi).
• "On observations for coincidence of collimators at Royal Observatory Greenwich" (M, N. Vols xlv and liii).
• "On the variations of level against of the Transit Circle at Royal Observatory Greenwich" (M.N. Vol.xlvii).
• "On the longitude of Paris" (M.N. vol li).
• "On stellar Photography" (M.N. Vols xlix and liv)
• "On the R-D discordnace" (M.N. vol Liii p. 374 and 424, vol Liv p. 486, Mem Part. 3. vol ii);
• "On new forms of levels" (M.N. Vol Lii).
• "Conference of the Cape (1880) and Greenwich (1880) Star Catalogues" (Mem. Rs.F.S, vol Li).
• "On the reduction of measures of photographic plates" (N.N. vol LiV)

He co-edited the first official history of the Royal Astronomical Society along with John Louis Emil Dreyer, History of the Royal Astronomical Society 1820–1920 (1923, reprinted 1987).^[6]

He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1930 at a conference in Stockholm. He had married Agnes Margaret Whyte in 1899; they had one daughter, Ruth.

A few months before Turner's death in 1930, the Lowell Observatory announced the discovery of a new planet, and an eleven-year-old Oxford schoolgirl, Venetia Burney, proposed the name Pluto for it to her grandfather Falconer Madan, who was retired from the Bodleian Library.^[7] Madan passed the name to Turner, who cabled it to colleagues at the Lowell Observatory in the United States.^[8] The new planet was officially named "Pluto" on 24 March 1930.^[9]

His portrait, by Catharine Dodgson, hangs at New College, Oxford, at which he held a Professorial Fellowship attached to the Savilian Professor of Astronomy.

Honours

• Savilian Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford^[10]
• Foundation Scholar of Trinity College, Cambridge
• 1st Class Math, with Exhibition, and 1st Class Physics, with Amott Exhibition and Medal, University of London, 1880
• Mathematical Scholarship and 1st Class Experimental Physics, University of London, 1882
• Second Wrangler
  and Sheepshanks Astronomical Exhibitioner, Cambridge, 1882
• 1st Class Math. Tripos, 3rd part, and 2nd Smith's Prize
• Fellow of Trinity. F.R.A.S.
• Chief Assistant at
  Greenwich Observatory
  .
• Fellow of the Royal Society, June 1897 ^[11]

Lectures

In 1913 and 1915 he was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on A Voyage in Space and Wireless Messages from the Stars.

Awards

• Bruce Medal (1927)

Named after him

• The crater Turner on the Moon
• Asteroid 1186 Turnera

Works

• Astronomical Discovery Gutenberg ebook with plates, originally published 1904.

References