Thomas Hornsby
Thomas Hornsby FRS (1733 in Durham – 11 April 1810 in Oxford) was a British astronomer and mathematician.
Life
Hornsby became a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford in 1760.
He occupied the
Hornsby was especially concerned with the observation of the transit of Venus. In 1761, he observed the transit of Venus from Shirburn Castle, in Oxfordshire, the seat of the Earl of Macclesfield. George Parker, 2nd Earl of Macclesfield (ca. 1695–1764), celebrated as an astronomer, had spent most of his time conducting astronomical observations at Shirburn Castle; here he had built an observatory and a chemical laboratory.
On the 1st April 1764 Hornsby observed the partial phases of an annular solar eclipse.[1]
Despite the international efforts made to observe the 1761 transit, poor weather conditions hampered observations. In 1766 Hornsby informed the Royal Society that preparations needed to begin for the 1769 transit, his publication in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society focusing attention on the "cone of visibility" indicating some of the better places to observe the transit.
Hornsby himself viewed the 1769 transit at the
In the periodical
Hornsby was instrumental in the establishment of the Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford in 1772, and was made Radcliffe Observer in the same year. In 1782, he was appointed Sedleian Professor of Natural Philosophy. In 1783, he became Radcliffe Librarian. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1788.[3]
Hornsby made tens of thousands of astronomical observations. These were not published, however, until 1932, and were donated to
The crater Hornsby on the Moon is named after him.
N.B. His death announcement in the Kentish Gazette 24 April 1810 quotes his death as "Wednesday (11th Apr. 1810) at the Observatory Oxford, aged 76, the Rev. Thomas Hornsby D.D. & F.R.S. Savalian Professor of Astronomy, Professor of Natural Philosophy, & Librarian of the Radcliffe Library."
The O.D.N.B gives this information:
"Hornsby, Thomas (1733–1810), astronomer, the son of Thomas Hornsby (bap. 1704, d. 1771), an apothecary and later alderman, and his wife, Thomasine Forster, née Coulson (bap. 1705, d. 1775), was baptized in the parish of St Nicholas, Durham, on 27 August 1733. Hornsby died in Oxford on 11 April 1810, and was buried at St Giles' there on 19 April."
Sources
- ^ "Observations on the Eclipse of the Sun, April 1, 1764" (PDF).
- ^ Teets 2003, p. 347.
- ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter H" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
- Thomas Harriot's manuscripts
- History of transit observing
- Stephen Johnston, "Blast from the Past: Measurement and morals in the early Transits of Venus," Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford, at http://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/phystat05/Talks/johnston.ppt (accessed July 2006)
- Kentish Gazette 24 April 1810
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Teets, Donald (December 2003). "Transits of Venus and the Astronomical Unit" (PDF). Mathematics Magazine. 76 (5): 335–348. S2CID 54867823.