William Frederick Archdall Ellison
Reverend William Frederick Archdall Ellison | |
|---|---|
| Born | 28 April 1864 |
| Died | 31 December 1936 (aged 72) |
| Nationality | Irish |
| Known for | The Amateur's Telescope (1920) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy |
| Institutions | Armagh Observatory |
Reverend William Frederick Archdall Ellison
Hebrew scholar, organist, avid amateur telescope maker, and, from 1918 to 1936, director of Armagh Observatory in Armagh, Northern Ireland. He was the father of Mervyn A. Ellison, the senior professor of the School of Cosmic Physics at Dunsink Observatory
from 1958 to 1963.
Biography
Ellison came from a clerical family, his father Humphrey Eakins Ellison having been
Holy Orders and moved to England, where he became the Curate of Tudhoe and Monkwearmouth. In 1894 he took his MA and BD
degrees and in the following year won the Elrington Theological Prize.
In 1899 he returned to Ireland to become secretary of the
The English Mechanic.[3] On 8 February 1918 he was elected to the fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society.[4] His book The Amateur's Telescope (1920) is still considered a standard for telescope-makers and a forerunner of the more extensive series on the same topic by Albert Graham Ingalls.[5]
On 2 September 1918 Ellison was appointed Director of the Armagh Observatory. He found the Observatory in a state of disrepair and set about repairing the instruments and the observatory dome. On 3 January 1919 he deeded a telescope of his own to the observatory, an 18-inch reflecting telescope, which is still there.
Ellison was a highly regarded planetary and
Grubb refractor telescope and even discovered a new one close to Beta Lyrae, and according to Patrick Moore, was one of the few people to have observed an eclipse of Saturn's moon Iapetus by Saturn's outermost (A) ring on 28 February 1919.[6]
In 1934 Ellison became
. He died on 31 December 1936, having held the office of Director of the observatory for nearly twenty years.Bibliography
- The Amateur's Telescope (R. Carswell & Son, Ltd., 1920)
Notes
- ^ "1937MNRAS..97..266P Page 266". articles.adsabs.harvard.edu. Retrieved 1 February 2017.
- ^ "1913JBAA...24..181. Page 181". cdsads.u-strasbg.fr. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
- ISBN 0-486-43265-3.
- ^ "1918MNRAS..78..231. Page 231". cdsads.u-strasbg.fr. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
- ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Retrieved 22 August 2012.
- ISBN 1-85233-656-0.
References
- "Armagh Observatory between the Wars". Retrieved 8 October 2007.
- "Armagh Observatory: the early years". Retrieved 8 October 2007.
External links
| Authority control databases: People |
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