Recently we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Piazzi Smyth with an exhibition in the Nelson Monument on Calton Hill. It is still in place as I pen these words.
He was born on the 3rd of January 1819 in Naples, Italy. He was the son of Admiral William Henry Smyth who was, at the time, on secondment in Italy.
Admiral Smyth and his wife had made the acquaintance of Giuseppe Piazzi, a celebrated Italian astronomer in Palermo and were so interested in his studies that they not only chose “Piazzi” to be their son’s middle name, but also asked Giuseppe to be his godfather. Whereupon, Giuseppe, at the christening, expressed the desire that Charles become an astronomer.
After the family returned to Bedford, England, his father bought the young Charles a powerful telescope and set up Bedford Observatory. And Charles rapidly enthused to this activity.
From the age of ten to sixteen he attended Bedford Grammar School but immediately on leaving he set out for the Cape as assistant astronomer to Thomas Maclear.
Among his activities over a ten-year period at the Cape he observed Halley’s Comet and performed surveying activities to accurately determine various meridional arcs that had been established in the area.
Following the untimely death of Thomas Henderson in 1845 he was appointed as the second Astronomer Royal for Scotland and he arrived in Edinburgh to take up his post in early 1846, going on to spend over 42 years in post on Calton Hill.
In further episodes I will present a number of the activities that this great astronomer pursued over those 42 years, and, indeed, extended into his retirement in Ripon, Yorkshire.
Dr Bruce Vickery