Dr. Arthur A. Rambaut, F.R.S

Abstract

ARTHUR ALCOCK RAMBAUT, Radcliffe Observer at Oxford, who died at a nursing home on October 14, after a prolonged illness, was born at Waterford on September 21, 1859, and was a son of the Rev. E. F. Rambaut. At Trinity College, Dublin, he won a first science scholarship in 1880 and took his degree the ^following year as senior moderator and gold medallist in mathematics and mathematical physics. Having spent some time as senior science master at the Royal School, Armagh (where he had been educated himself), he was-in 1882 appointed assistant at the Dublin University Observatory at Dunsink under Sir Robert Ball. He had charge of the transit circle and observed regularly with it for about eight years, the results being published in Parts VI. and VII. of the “Astronomical Observations and Researches made at Dunsink.” This work was laid aside when Mr. Isaac Roberts presented the observatory with a 15-inch reflector, with which some of his earliest work in astronomical photography had been made. Rambaut commenced work with this instrument as soon as the clockwork had been somewhat improved, and a photo graphic survey was made of the great star cluster in Perseus and published in a paper by Ball and Rambaut in the Trans. R. Irish Academy. Soon after, in the autumn of 1892, Ball left for Cambridge and Rambaut was appointed to succeed him as Andrews professor of astronomy and Royal Astronomer of Ireland. During the next five years he continued his photographic work, but under great difficulties and with long interruptions, as the mounting, clockwork, and the dome under which the instrument was housed were all found to be useless and had to be replaced by others.