Arthur Alcock Rambaut

“ By the adoption of a regular system of work, and a careful plan of reduction, he was able to keep his observations reduced practically up to date, and published them annually with a degree of punctuality which astonished his contemporaries. ”

“ With his usual energy he set to work at once to reorganize the whole management. He remodelled the volumes of observations, put the library on a proper footing, mounted the new (Sheepshanks) equatorial and organized a new magnetic observatory. In 1847 an altazimuth was erected, designed by Airy to enable observations of the moon to be made not only on the meridian, but whenever she might be visible. In 1848 Airy invented the reflex zenith tube to replace the zenith sector previously employed. ”

“ This value, although considerably in excess of that previously found by different methods was held by Airy, from the care and completeness with which the observations were carried out and discussed, to be “entitled to compete with the others on, at least, equal terms.”
In 1872 Airy conceived the idea of treating the lunar theory in a new way, and at the age of seventy-one he embarked on the prodigious toil which this scheme entailed. A general description of his method will be found in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. xxxiv. No. 3. ”

“ In this mode of treating the question the order of the terms is numerical, and though the amount of labour is such as might well have deterred a younger man, yet the details were easy, and a great part of it might be entrusted to a mere computer. ”

“ Of his astronomical writings during this period the most important are his investigation of the mass of Jupiter, his report to the British Association on the progress of astronomy during the 19th century, and his memoir On an Inequality of Long Period in the Motions of the Earth and Venus. ”