Sabine, SIR EDWARD, physicist, was born in Dublin, on the 14th October 1788. He obtained a commission in the artillery in his sixteenth year, and accompanied Ross and Parry as astronomer in the expeditions of 1818-20 in search of a north-west passage. Between 1821 and 1827 he undertook a series of voyages to places between the equator and the north pole, making at each point pendulum and magnetic experiments of great value. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1818, he was from 1861 to 1879 its president. He was for many years secretary of the British Association, and filled the office of president in 1853. In 1856 he was raised to the rank of major-general, in 1869 he was created K.C.B., retiring as general in 1877; and in 1875 he was elected a corresponding member of the French
Academy. He died at Richmond, June 26, 1883, aged ninety-five. His scientific reputation rests chiefly upon his labours in terrestrial magnetism, his various memoirs in the Philosophical Transactions and Reports to the British Association being to this day invaluable collections of magnetic facts. By his personal influence he did more than any other single man in inducing the government to establish magnetic observatories in different parts of the world, and in initiating the valuable magnetic work now carried out by the Admiralty.