Edward Charles Cyril Baly 1871-1948

Abstract

Edward Charles Cyril Baly, who died on 3 January 1948, had very nearly attained the age of seventy-seven, having been born on 9 February 1871. He was the son of Edward Ely Baly and Alice Mary, daughter of John Winterbottom. At the time of their marriage in 1870 Edward Ely Baly was a clerk in the Bank of England. He was appointed Deputy Chief Cashier in 1879, and the family then came to reside in the official residence at the Bank in Threadneedle Street, since the Chief Cashier refused to occupy it. Here the Baly family lived until the retirement of E. E. Baly in 1895. In 1883 E. C. C. Baly went to Temple Grove School, East Sheen, and in 1885 obtained a junior Platt scholarship at Aldenham School, where he won the senior Platt scholarship in 1886. As he has himself related, he got an excellent training in Latin and Greek under the headmaster of Aldenham, John Kennedy, to whom he owed a deep debt of gratitude. Realizing that his interests lay more in science than in classical scholarship, his father took him in 1888 to see Professor Ramsay at University College, London. The result was that he came to University College in 1889 and (at Ramsay’s suggestion) studied for the Associateship of the Institute of Chemistry, which he obtained in 1892. Baly’s father must have been a man of scientific tastes, for he possessed a six-inch astronomical telescope with spectroscopic attachment, the result being that his son early gained some knowledge of astronomical spectroscopy. Becoming under Ramsay’s influence a skilful glass-blower, he very soon acquired the technique of making and filling ‘vacuum’ tubes with various gases and examining their emission spectra. Although the results were not published till 1893, it seems pretty certain that the young student for the A.I.C. was soon engaged in interesting research work! Baly’s ability as an investigator and teacher was recognized by Professor Ramsay.