74
5 Nearly Half a Million Stars
5.4 Collaborating with David Gill
Sir David Gill (1843–1914) (Fig. 5.4) was born as the son of a clock-maker
and grew up in Aberdeen. He also studied there, among others, with the
famous physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), and then worked for
some time in his father’s company. But he got tired of the trade and started
doing astronomical work, first of all on the private observatory of James Ludovic
Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres (1847–1913). Lindsay
was president of the Royal Astronomical Society. David Gill’s specialty was the
maintenance and construction of instrumentation; it was because of these skills
that he took part in the expedition to Mauritius in 1874 to observe the transit of
Venus in front of the Sun. In 1877, he took part in an expedition to Ascension,
an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, to make observations of Mars when it
was very close to Earth. Both expeditions were set up to better determine the
Fig. 5.4 David Gill (1843–1914). This photo comes from Henriette Hertzsprung–
Kapteyn’s biography [1]
5 Nearly Half a Million Stars
5.4 Collaborating with David Gill
Sir David Gill (1843–1914) (Fig. 5.4) was born as the son of a clock-maker
and grew up in Aberdeen. He also studied there, among others, with the
famous physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), and then worked for
some time in his father’s company. But he got tired of the trade and started
doing astronomical work, first of all on the private observatory of James Ludovic
Lindsay, 26th Earl of Crawford and 9th Earl of Balcarres (1847–1913). Lindsay
was president of the Royal Astronomical Society. David Gill’s specialty was the
maintenance and construction of instrumentation; it was because of these skills
that he took part in the expedition to Mauritius in 1874 to observe the transit of
Venus in front of the Sun. In 1877, he took part in an expedition to Ascension,
an island in the South Atlantic Ocean, to make observations of Mars when it
was very close to Earth. Both expeditions were set up to better determine the
Fig. 5.4 David Gill (1843–1914). This photo comes from Henriette Hertzsprung–
Kapteyn’s biography [1]