biography
| name: |
Airy, Sir George (Biddell)
|
pronunciation:
[airee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1801–92)
|
| biography:
| Astronomer and geophysicist, born in Alnwick, Northumberland, NE England, UK. He studied at Cambridge, was appointed professor of mathematics there in 1828, and became astronomer royal (1835–81). He reorganized the Greenwich Observatory, and discovered errors in planetary theory in terms of the motion of the Earth and Venus. He determined the mass of the Earth from gravity measurements in mines, and also invented a cylindrical lens for the correction of astigmatism, from which he himself suffered. Greenwich Mean Time, measured using Airy's telescope positioned on the line of zero longitude in his observatory, became Britain's legal time in 1880. |
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