George Biddell Airy, F. R. S. (1801-1892): A centenary commemoration

Abstract

The second day of January 1992 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of one of astronomy’s most remarkable figures. George Biddell Airy (figure 1) made no single outstanding discovery, though he came to be one of the most conspicuous members of his profession. He was a leading creator of institutional science who, from the early 1830s, addressed himself to the wholesale collection and revision of quantitative astronomical data on what might be called an industrial scale. Using instruments of his own design and superlative construction he was able, like the manufacturers and engineers he so admired, to make uniformity of product in positional astronomy a matter of course, by replacing skill with ‘regularity of procedure’. The consistent quality of the Royal Observatory’s astronomical constants, re-observed, revised and published between 1835 and 1881, when he was Astronomer Royal, provided a bedrock and role-model for positional astronomical investigation in Europe, America and the Empire. It is unfortunate that some oft-repeated personal insights into Airy’s character, however, come from young members of the Greenwich staff who knew him only in old age.