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Contents:
Portraits
References
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This document is intended to serve as a general guide to researchers, and particularly as an aid to those using the RAS Library. The sources are arranged roughly in order of the prospect of finding useful information, tempered by accessibility. Researchers requiring RAS images for publication should refer to the Library Information Sheet Notes for Picture Researchers.
The chances of a successful search are improved if as much information as possible is assembled in advance; for example, the full name (correctly spelt!), nationality, approximate dates of birth and death, places of work, specialisms, society memberships, and so on.
A full bibliography of the sources referred to in the following text is appended at the end of this document; in the text, links to the bibliography are flagged in colour.
List of Abbreviations:
Biographical Sources
1. If subject is alive, or died within the last 50 years
Try Who’s Who. For recent British and European scientists try Who’s Who in Science in Europe and, for North American ones, American Men and Women of Science. Some US astronomers omitted from the latter are included in the American National Biography (successor to The Dictionary of American Biography).
Many Australian figures feature in Bhathal’s Australian Astronomers and in R. Haynes et al’s Explorers of the Southern Sky, and Canadians in R. A. Jarrell’s Cold Light of Dawn.
For Russians, or citizens of countries in the former USSR, try J. Turkevich’s Soviet Men of Science and for Lithuanians, S. Matulaityte’s Astronomers: Bibliographical Index. Also try Abbott’s Biographical Dictionary and Debus’s World Who’s Who in Science.
Information on living astronomers, or those who have very recently died, can be the most difficult of all to obtain, as obituaries have not yet been published. Obvious current biographical sources such as Who’s Who, publications such as Who’s Who in America, and the Year Book of the Royal Society can be tried. Books by the subject may have biographical information on their covers. There are lists of IAU members in the International Astronomical Union's publications, the journal Transactions of the International Astronomical Union, and the IAU’s website. Information on living astronomers can also be gleaned by using the NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) website to find their recent papers, and perhaps affiliation.
The RAS does not give out addresses of living Fellows, but any Fellow can be written to c/o the Society. Astronomy & Geophysics, and its predecessor, the Quarterly Journal, report citations made on presentation of RAS awards, which may include biographical details, and The Observatory reports on meetings to commemorate distinguished Fellows. Awards with a wider appeal, such as appointments of Astronomers Royal, are often reported in journals such as Nature and Astronomy Now.
2. If subject is deceased
Consult the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. This work includes short biographies of many past scientists and excellent bibliographies which can be used to find the significant literature on the subject up to the date of publication. The following, mentioned above, also contain information on scientists of earlier years: American Men and Women of Science; American National Biography; Abbott’s Biographical Dictionary; Debus’s World Who’s Who in Science.
3. General Biography in the RAS Library
To find biographical books and pamphlets in the RAS library, look in the subject catalogue under QB 36, where such material is listed in alphabetical order of subject. Biographies of scientists in fields other than astronomy have also been put there for convenience in a single sequence. It might also be worth browsing through QB 35, which lists collected biographical works.
4. RAS Members
Did the subject live beyond 1820? Then if they were a member of the RAS (normally a Fellow, but possibly an Associate), they may have been recorded by an obituary on their death.
An Index to obituary notices of RAS Fellows and Associates, with links to the original papers, is available online. Mostly the obituaries appeared in the Society’s own publications (Quarterly Journal, Monthly Notices, Memoirs, etc.) but links are also given to obituaries in other sources that are available online. In 1997 a new journal, Astronomy & Geophysics, replaced the RAS’s Quarterly Journal. However, Astronomy & Geophysics is not at present freely available online so obituaries therein are not as yet included in the Index.
For the majority of RAS Fellows (the exception being a few of the early ones) the Library should have the form or proposal for election, giving the address, titles, and sponsors. (Note that this information will normally only be given for Fellows who have been dead for at least 40 years.) As a double check against omissions, it may be worth consulting the lists of new members given in early volumes of Monthly Notices and Memoirs.
If an obituary exists, it normally indicates that the member was held in a certain esteem by the Society although, as in most journals, the number of published obituaries has declined over the years (see Lankford's article A Crisis in Documentation for a description of this process). Obituaries generally give a good amount of personal and professional information, and may also give clues to other sources such as memberships of other societies.
The RAS Library’s Online Catalogue should be checked for books and pamphlets by the subject, and the Catalogue of Archives and Manuscripts for any papers and correspondence held by the Library. A supplement to the published Archive catalogue can be consulted in the Library. Detailed information and anecdotal accounts on many figures in the RAS’s history can be found in the two-volume History of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Another journal, associated with the Society but not published by it, is The Observatory. In its earlier years this included many biographical snippets, along with a few portraits and group photographs, and there are cumulative indexes up to vol. 90 (1970). Links to obituaries published in The Observatory are included in the online Index.
5. Obituaries in other sources
If it is likely that the person was a Fellow of the Royal Society, the RS has produced an invaluable List of Fellows from 1660 to date, and an index to obituaries (which were only published from 1830). Obituaries appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (1800–1932), the Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society (1932–1955, not held in the RAS Library), and the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society (1955 to date). The Royal Society also maintains the Sackler Archive Resource, a database offering access to biographical information on Fellows of the Royal Society.
Obituaries are also to be found in a number of other journals specialised by subject or nationality:
Journal of the British Astronomical Association is applicable to subjects who died after 1890 and particularly to amateur astronomers. There is a published index to Vols 1–50 (1890–1940), and R.A. Marriott has recently published a second volume covering Vols 51–100 (1940–1990). A.J. Kinder, Hon. Librarian of the British Astronomical Association, has compiled a list of all BAA members from 1890; he may be able to answer postal enquiries on particular names. (Mr A.J. Kinder, c/o BAA, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0DU).
Astrophysical Journal formerly included obituaries of internationally famous figures and those associated with the journal.
L’Astronomie has many obituaries since 1888, mainly of French astronomers but some US/international ones also (in French). Annual indices only.
Journal of the Association of Lunar & Planetary Observers has some short notices; some years indexed, but not all.
Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific regularly included obituaries up to Volume 82 (1970; less regularly thereafter), with an emphasis on West Coast Americans, but also many British and European figures. Indexes exist for each 25 volumes then 76-82.
The above journals are indexed on the ARIBIB online index, and scanned versions of most are available on the ADS website.
6. Miscellaneous biographical sources.
The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts’ The Manuscript Papers of British Scientists is a useful source, as is the Guide to the manuscript papers of British scientists produced by the National Cataloguing Unit for the Archives of Contemporary Scientists. The Historical Manuscripts Commission has compiled a UK National Register of Archives, which includes references to papers of persons and families relating to British history, plus connected records, in a network of locations in the UK and abroad.
There are many biographical references in Sky & Telescope magazine (naturally strong on American astronomers). An unpublished biographical index to Sky & Telescope, last revised 2005, has been compiled by Kevin Krisciunas and can be accessed on his website.
De Vorkin’s bibliography The History of Modern Astronomy contains many references to biographical articles, including those where the influence of a subject’s work is discussed in context. Also try Abbott’s Biographical Dictionary, Debus’s World Who’s Who in Science, and Poggendorff’s Biographisch-Literarisches Handworterbuch (1863 to date).
For references to contemporary articles, obituaries and portraits in journals such as Nature and Philosophical Magazine up to about 1930, see Scott Barr Index to Biographical Fragments in Unspecialized Scientific Journals.
For British figures of any period up to 1960 try the Dictionary of National Biography. The Concise Dictionary down to 1950 is on the RAS Library’s open shelves and contains short references to anyone who is in the full version, which also has supplements to 1960 and is available in the Library in the Compact Edition, in microprint form (i.e. readable with a magnifying glass). A complete revision of the DNB was published in 2004; some of the more glaring omissions were included in a stopgap Missing Persons volume. A less well-known supplement to this is Boase’s Modern English Biography, which may be available in libraries.
Taylor’s books on Mathematical Practitioners contain much information on instrument makers and others associated with astronomy but must be used with caution in the light of later research. These books have been supplanted for instrument makers, though not for other figures such as publishers, by Clifton’s Directory of British Scientific Instrument Makers (see Crawforth’s article in the Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society for a guide to the use of this and other printed and manuscript sources on instrument makers). The Germanic equivalent of this book is Zinner’s work on German and Dutch instrument makers.
Two books of collected short essays contain a number of biographical notes and portraits including some obscure figures; Patrick Moore’s Armchair Astronomy and Ashbrook's Astronomical Scrapbook.
Two less well-known sources of considerable use for minor British figures (especially clergymen) are Venn’s Alumni Cantabrigienses, Foster’s Alumni Oxonienses and Emden’s Biographical Registers of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Together these provide details on all Oxford and Cambridge graduates up to 1886 and 1900 respectively. Records of French scientists may well be sought in the Academie des Sciences Index Biographique. Astronomers associated with survey work in India up to 1843 may be found in the numerous biographical notes in Phillimore’s four-volume work on the Survey of India, amplified by Markham’s later book.
7. Bibliographical materials used as biographical sources
Bibliographical sources may be consulted to find books and articles by the subject and some may also reveal obituaries if the volumes near a known date of death are scrutinized. These include:
Up to 1925: Royal Society Catalogue of Scientific Papers.
Up to 1880: Houzeau and Lancaster Bibliographie Generale de l’Astronomie – consult the biographie/necrologie sections of vols. I & II and the name index to vol. I in the 1964 edition. Covers material up to 1880. Included in ARIBIB index.
1881–1898: Stroobant, P. and Belgian National Committee for Astronomy. Bibliography of Astronomy 1881–1898.
1899–1968: Astronomischer Jahresbericht. Biographical articles indexed under author not subject, necessary to look in biographical section. Included in ARIBIB index.
1969–2000: Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts. Similarily look in sections 005/006/007 (Biography, Personal Notes, Obituaries); again, subjects’ names are not indexed. Included in ARIBIB index.
A series of bibliographies dealing specifically with the history of science (not held by the RAS):
ISIS Cumulative Bibliography: a bibliography of the history of science formed from ISIS critical bibliographies.
Four series to date, covering ISIS critical bibliographies from 1913 to 1995.
8. If the date of death is roughly known and the figure is of reasonable eminence
It may be worth consulting the index to The Times for any valedictory notes. Westminster Reference Library holds the printed index to The Times, and microfilms of the paper. Most large libraries have the Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th ed., 1911, the best edition for pre-1910 history and biography, British and foreign.
9. Nomenclature for Lunar Features and Other Celestial Objects
Requests are often received at the RAS as to the identity of people whose names are attached to lunar features, or for the location of a named feature. The following items will give a start. Menzel’s Report on Lunar Nomenclature is an authoritative reference. Recent works to illuminate this complex field include Cocks and Cocks’ Who’s Who on the Moon, and Ewen Whitaker's book, Mapping and Naming the Moon. Earlier sources include the BAA’s Who's Who in the Moon (a complete revision of which is currently in progress) and Wilkins & Moore’s The Moon. Andersson and Whitaker’s NASA Catalogue of Lunar Nomenclature gives a detailed list of names and positions, while Rukl’s Maps of Lunar Hemispheres provides key maps. The IAU WGPSN authorises the naming of important features on the surface of planets and satellites, and their Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature is maintained by the United States Geological Survey.
There are many astronomers, and others, whose achievements are recorded in the naming of a Minor Planet. Potted biographies are to be found in Lutz Schmadel’s Dictionary of Minor Planet Names.
There are a few objects which have non-systematic ‘customary’ names, such as the Gum Nebula, or Barnard’s Star, and the best place to start to research these is in the various dictionaries of astronomy, such as Ian Ridpath’s Dictionary of Astronomy, or Jacqueline Mitton’s Cambridge Dictionary of Astronomy.
10. Archival Material
There is not space here to list all the possible sources of manuscript material, and a research project of this kind is in any case a different matter from looking up printed references. The archives of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, the RAS, and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh contain much material of use to the would-be biographer. The Catalogue of RAS Archives and Manuscripts, compiled by Dr J.A. Bennett and originally published in the Memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society vol. 85 (1978), is available on-line.
A useful, but not exhaustive, guide to locations is provided by the RCHMss list of papers of British scientists; the latter holdings are included on the Historical Manuscripts Commission's UK National Register of Archives website. Other websites which may be of use are Archives Hub and Access to Archives (A2A).
11. Websites
11.a Biographical Websites
MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews. Collection of over 1000 biographies and historical articles of a mathematical nature; features include birthplace maps, the facility to check mathematicians who were born or died on a given date, and the Davis Archive of women who graduated in mathematics from British and Irish universities prior to 1940. Portraits of many individuals are available, and can be downloaded as posters.
Astronomiae Historia / History of Astronomy. Originally created for the Astronomische Gesellschaft; since 1998 it has also been maintained on behalf of Commission 41 ( History of Astronomy ) of the International Astronomical Union. Provides information for historians of astronomy and related fields. Includes short biographies and very comprehensive selection of biographical website links, organised into categories.
Astro Info Service. Formed in 1982 by Dave Shayler, co-founder and chairman of the Midlands Spaceflight Society, to distribute information on human space exploration, including that from the former USSR, using official documentation from major space agencies. Their services include biographical profiles of astronauts and cosmonauts, with portraits, which will eventually be available by mail order; some of these can be downloaded from their website.
11.b Archive Websites:
Historical Manuscripts Commission (formerly Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts), UK National Register of Archives. Includes references to papers of persons and families relating to British history, plus connected records, in a network of national and local record offices, university libraries and specialist repositories in the UK and abroad.
Archives Hub, maintained on behalf of the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL), provides a single point of access to descriptions of archives held in UK universities and colleges, and forms one part of the UK’s National Archives Network.
Access to Archives (A2A), maintained at the Public Record Office, contains catalogues of archives (largely local record offices) from all over England. Includes section of web links for family historians.
11.c Bibliographical Websites:
ARIBIB (Astronomisches Rechen-Institut Heidelberg Bibliographical Database for Astronomical References). The most comprehensive free Web index to bibliographies of older astronomical material; includes articles indexed by Houzeau and Lancaster. The most comprehensive free Web index to bibliographies of older astronomical material; includes articles indexed by Bibliographie Generale de l’Astronomie, Astronomischer Jahresbericht and Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts. Does not (currently) include material published after 2000.
COPAC. A union catalogue providing free access to the merged online catalogues of the largest university research libraries in the UK and Ireland, using records supplied by CURL. Can produce items not included on other bibliographical websites, e.g., catalogues of items bequeathed by a particular person.
NASA (Astrophysics Data System (ADS)). Includes free index to astronomical and geophysical article abstracts; coverage of older material less comprehensive than ARIBIB.
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Corrections
This revision by M.I. Chibnall from an original by P.D. Hingley, with contributions by Ian Howarth, John Lane, Jacqueline Mitton, Margaret Penston, and Ian Ridpath.
The information in this document is believed to be correct at the time of publication, but is subject to change. We welcome corrections or suggestions; please contact the RAS Librarian or
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