Abstract
For the almost three centuries from the appointment of John Flamsteed in 1675 to the retirement of Richard Woolley in 1971, the office of Director of the Royal Observatory and the title Astronomer Royal were deemed inseparable (although just at the outset there had been slight variability in the title’s wording). Flamsteed and his successors were all among Britain’s most distinguished scientists. They included Edmond Halley, in office 1720-42, probably the greatest scientist of the generation after Newton; James Bradley 1742-62, discoverer of optical aberration giving the first direct empirical evidence for the Copernican system ; Nevil Maskelyne 1765-1811, who was the first scientist to weigh the Earth ; Sir George Airy 1835-81, who personally performed most of the functions nowadays requiring a string of research councils; and Sir Frank Dyson 1910-33, who organized the observations at the 1919 solar eclipse that led to the acceptance of the modification of Newton’s law of gravitation proposed by Einstein.
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