A NOTED ASTRONOMER.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 8

A NOTED ASTRONOMER.

"By the death of Sir Richard Gill the world has lost its mast distinguished astronomer," says a London paper. S The scientific fame of Sir David Gill t rests chiefly on his skilful pioneer work in determining the distances of the, heavenly bodies. He was one of the first to conceive the immense part photography could he made to play in elucidating the mystery of stellar motion and in cataloguing the stars— called by him "the crucibles of the Creator"—to any degree of magnitude. Sir David Gill was an Aberdonian, with as large a fund of humourous stories as his brother astronomer, the late Sir Robert Ball. Some of the 'best stories have in fact been attributed to both men. One which Sir David Gill used to tell against himself concerned a lecture, in which he had stated that astronomers could now measure within one-hundredth of a second of an arc, "which was equivalent to measuring a threepenny piece at a distance of a hundred miles." In subsequently proposing a vote of thanks to the lecturer, somebody remarked that there could be no doubt about Sir David's nationality, for nobody but a Scotchman would bother his head about a threepenny bit a hundred miles away. He poured rich scorn on Professor Swell's theory of. man-made canals on Mars.—Exchange..