MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 30 March 1926, Page 5

MARTYR TO SCIENCE.

AN AMATEUR’S SACRIFICES. BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—COPYRIGHT. • LONDON, March 29. The Daily Chronicle publishes a pathetic story of the sacrifices that William Denning, F.R.A.S., a wellknown amateur astronomer, has made in the interests of science. He is now aged seventy-eight and lives alone in Bristol on a small civil list pension. He is' able to take only liquid food, owing to the hardships of his earlier life, when for many years he spent the nights in his garden observing the stars, even when there was snow on the ground. He often spent the following day in his study checking his observations. The face of the heavens became so familiar, that a glance with the naked eye uas sufficient to tell him whether there had been an alteration among the larger stars. So he was able to make the famous discovery of the new star Cygnus. Denning’s observations recently proved that the temperature of the air fifty miles above the earth was tropical.