Smyth CP
NAME: Smyth, Charles Piazzi
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Director of the Edinburgh Royal Observatory at Edinburgh (1845-88)
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 3 January 1819, at Naples, Italy
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 21 February 1900, in Clova, near Ripon, Scotland. Aged 81
DISCIPLINE: Astronomer and meteorologist
FIELD: Astronomy and meteorology
LANGUAGE: English
PARENTS: Admiral William Henry Smyth (1788-1865) and Annarella Warrington
SIBLINGS: Two brothers (Warington and Henry) and six sisters
SPOUSE: Jessie Duncan (d. 1896), married 1855
CHILDREN: None
EDUCATION: Bedford Grammar School, 1830-35
MAJOR WORK: 'Teneriffe: An Astronomer's Experiment', 1858
LIFE AND TIMES: Charles Piazzi Smyth was born in 1819 at Naples, Italy, the second of the nine children of William Henry Smyth, who was then stationed in Italy with the British Royal Navy, and Annarella Warrington.
William Henry Smyth was a keen amateur astronomer and a friend of the Sicilian astronomer <godfather was> Piazzi*, whose 'Palermo Star Catalogue' he proof-read and, as a result, at Charles's christening it was Piazzi who acted as godfather and after whom the child was named.
Meanwhile, after local elementary education, in 1830 Charles Piazzi Smyth was sent to Bedford Grammar School, where he remained until the age of 16. His schooling was cut short by the offer from his father's friend Thomas Maclear of the post of assistant at the Royal Observatory, in Capetown, which Piazzi Smyth accepted.
He left England in the summer of 1835, arrived in the following October and worked for Maclear for 18 hours each day, calculating the positions of the brightest stars in the southern hemisphere, timing precisely the passages of stars through the meridian, and working out their exact altitudes above the horizon at the time of their meridian passage. He then had to make the extensive calculations to convert the raw observational data into star positions.
In 1836 the Admiralty instructed the Cape astronomers to start a major geodetic programme to re-measure the exact length of an arc of the meridian that runs through Cape Town. During Piazzi Smyth's early years in South Africa, <worked for> JFW Herschel* was also there, and Piazzi Smyth made many observations for Herschel of Halley’s Comet.
It was at this time that Herschel introduced Piazzi Smyth to the photographic process of <used process of> Daguerre*, and by 1843 Piazzi Smyth had produced the oldest known photographs of people and scenes in South Africa.
In 1845, with Herschel's recommendation, the 26-year-old Piazzi Smyth was appointed as successor to Thomas Henderson as Director of the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, a
position that included the additional positions of Astronomer Royal for Scotland and professor of practical astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. Piazzi Smyth was elected a member of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1846.
In May 1856 Piazzi Smyth led an expedition, sailing in a yacht lent by his friend, the famous engineer <a pal of> Robert Stephenson* and sponsored by the British
Admiralty, to the Peak on Tenerife in order to discover "how much astronomical observation can be benefited, by eliminating the lower third or fourth part of the atmosphere".
While on the volcano, Piazzi Smyth made telescopic observations of planets and stars, measured the radiant heat of the moon, observed the solar spectrum, and made various other observations of the meteorology, geology, and botany of the island. In October 1856, he published a popular account of the trip: 'Teneriffe: An Astronomer's Experiment: or Specialities of a Residence Above the Clouds' (1858), and published his scientific results in a paper written for the Royal Society, of which he was elected a fellow in June 1857.
In 1859 Piazzi Smyth travelled to Russia, where he visited several observatories in major Russian cities, on his return publishing: 'Three Cities in Russia' (1862). Late in 1864, he published: 'Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid', which he followed with an expedition to Egypt during the winter of 1864-65, when he measured the orientation, sizes, and angles of the various parts of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and correlated the results with astronomical phenomena.
A paper containing his speculations on the design and significance of the Great Pyramid, which he sent to the Royal Society of London, was refused a hearing, and as a result he resigned his fellowship in February 1874 and published a personal defence of his beliefs in 'The Great Pyramid and the Royal Society' (1874).
Throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s Piazzi Smyth continued to do important work in spectroscopy, travelling frequently in search of clearer atmospheres and charting the
spectra of the sun, aurora (1871-72), zodiacal light (Palermo, 1872), the atmosphere under different meteorological conditions, and - in the laboratory, using vacuum tubes - of various luminous gases.
In 1877-78 he was at Lisbon charting the spectra of the sun. During the summer of 1881, he travelled to Madeira to study solar spectra. Meanwhile he continued his interest in meteorology, and in 1871 published a digest of meteorological data collected at 55 stations throughout Scotland.
By 1888 Piazzi Smyth retired to Yorkshire, where he studied cloud-forms by photography.
ASSESSMENT: A working astronomer.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: CP Smyth, astronomer and pyramidologist
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
DNB, DSB
Bruck, Hermann A. and M.T. Bruck, The Peripatetic Astronomer: Charles Piazzi Smyth, Adam Hilger: Bristol & Philadelphia, 1988