Airy, SIR GEORGE BIDDELL, K.C.B., Astronomer Royal from 1836 till his retirement in 1881, was born at Alnwick, 27th July 1801. Educated at Hereford, Colchester, and Manchester grammar-school, in 1819 he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, of which he was elected scholar (1822) and fellow (1824), having the year before come out senior wrangler. In 1826 he was elevated to the Lucasian professorship of mathematics, which he rescued from the reproach of being a sinecure, by delivering a course of public lectures on experimental philosophy; in 1828, he was made professor of Astronomy, and had the management of the newly erected Cambridge Observatory intrusted to him; and in 1836 he succeeded Pond as Astronomer Royal. By his introduction of new or more perfect scientific instruments, and of more rapid methods of calculation; by his researches in magnetism, meteorology, photography, &c. he deservedly obtained the reputation of being one of the ablest and most indefatigable of modern savants. To observe total solar eclipses, he visited Turin (1842), Gothenburg (1851), and Pobes, in Spain (1860); he was president of the Royal Society (1871-73); and in 1871 he became a Companion (Civil) of the Bath; in 1872, a Knight Commander. Among his works have been Astronomical Observations at Cambridge and Greenwich (20 vols. 1829-57); Catalogue of 2156 Stars (1849); Ipswich Lectures on Astronomy (1851); Algebraical and Numerical Theory of Errors of Observations (1861); Undulatory
Theory of Optics (1866); Atmospheric Chromatic Dispersion (1869); Magnetism (1871); and Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures (1876). He retired on a pension in 1881, and died in London, 2d January 1892.