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CHARLES SMYTH

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Originally appearing in Volume V25, Page 282 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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CHARLES SMYTH  PIAllI (1819-1900),
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British astronomer, was born at Naples on the 3rd of
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January 1819 . He was called Piazzi after his godfather, the
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Italian astronomer of that name, whose acquaintance his
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father,
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Admiral Smyth, had made at Palermo when on the Mediterranean station . His father subsequently settled at
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Bedford and equipped there an
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observatory, at which Piazzi Smyth received his first lessons in astronomy, At the age of sixteen he went out as assistant to
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Sir Thomas Maclear at the Cape of Good Hope, where he observed Halley's comet and the
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great comet of 1843, and took an active
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part in the verification and extension of La Caille's arc of the meridian . In 1845 he was appointed astronomer royal for Scotland and professor of astronomy in the university of
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Edinburgh . Here he completed the reduction, and continued the series, of the observations made by his predecessor, Thomas Henderson (see Edinburgh Observations, vols. xi.-xv.) . In 1856 he made experimental observations on the
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Peak of Teneriffe with a view to testing the astronomical advantages of a mountain station . The Admiralty made him a grant of £500 for the purpose, and a yacht—the " Titania "—of 140 tons and a
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fine 72 in.
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equatorial
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telescope were placed at his disposal by friends . The upshot of the expedition was to verify Newton's surmise, that a " most serene and quiet air . . . may perhaps be found on the tops of the highest mountains above the grosser clouds." The scientific results were detailed in a Report addressed to the lords commissioners of the admiralty, 1858, in a communication to the Royal Society (Phil . Trans. cxlviii . 465) and in the Edinburgh Observations, vol. xii . A popular account of the voyage is contained in Teneriffe, an Astronomer's Experiment, 1858 .

In 1871–1872 Piazzi Smyth investigated the spectra of the

aurora, and zodiacal
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light . He recommended the use of the " rainband for weather prediction (Jour . Scottish Meteor . Society, v . 84), and discovered, in conjunction with Professor A . S . Herschel, the
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harmonic relation between the rays emitted by carbon monoxide . In 1877-1878 he constructed at Lisbon a map of the solar-spectrum (Edin . Phil . Trans.
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xxix . 285), for which he received the Macdougall-Brisbane prize in 1880 . Further spectroscopic researches were carried out by him at Madeira in 188o (Madeira Spectroscopic, 1882), and at Winchester in 1884 (Edin .

Phil . Trans. vol. xxxii. pt. ii.) . He published besides Three Cities in

Russia, (1862), Our
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Inheritance in the Great
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Pyramid (1864),
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Life and
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Work at the Great Pyramid (1867), and a
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volume On the Antiquity of Intellectual Man (1868) . In 1888 he resigned his official position and retired to the neighbourhood of Ripon, where he died on the 21st of
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February 1900 . See Month . Notices Roy . Astr . Society, lxi . '89; Observatory,
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xxiii . 145, 184; R . Copeland in Astr . Nach .

No . 3636, and Pop . Astronomy (1900), p . 384; Nature, lxii . 161 (A . S . Herschel);

Andre and Rayet, L'Astronomie pratique, ii . 12, (A . M .

End of Article: CHARLES SMYTH
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SMYTH (or SMITH), WILLIAM (c. 1460-1514)
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