io2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Three years afterward he was elected to a scholarship. In 1823, oh 

 his graduating B. A., young Airy came out as Senior Wrangler. In 

 1824 he obtained his Fellowship at Trinity. His degree of M. A. w T as 

 taken in 1826, and he was simultaneously elected, though only then 

 in his twenty-fifth year, as Lucasian Professor at Cambridge. Illus- 

 trious philosophers bike Barrow and Newton had preceded him in the 

 occupation of that historic chair. Latterly, however, the office had 

 become, in a great measure, purely honorary, and might almost be said 

 to have degenerated into a sinecure. 



Prof. Airy, once elevated to that position, determined to avail him- 

 self of Ids professorship to the advantage alike of himself and the 

 university. Consequent upon this determination, he for nearly ten 

 years together namely, from 1827 to 1836 delivered, with admirable 

 effect, a series of public lectures on experimental philosophy, by which 

 his scientific "reputation was very considerably advanced. The series 

 was all the more remarkable, inasmuch as it was one of the earliest 

 means of effectively illustrating the marvellous phenomena constitut- 

 ing the now almost universally adopted undulatory theory of light. 

 Two years after Prof. Airy's induction into the chair established by 

 Lucas, the estimation in which he was held at the university was still 

 further signalized by his election to the Plumian Professorship. Nom- 

 inated to that post of authority and honor, he at once obtained, by 

 right of his position, the supreme command of the Cambridge Ob- 

 servatory. 



Already, even then, he began those remarkable improvements in 

 the method of calculating and publishing the observations which event- 

 ually became the law at Greenwich and at all the other great observa- 

 tories. As indicative of the energy and daring of his innovations at 

 Cambridge, he superintended the construction and mounting, one 

 after another, of a series of renowned astronomical instruments. In 

 that observatory, he brought into use a noble specimen of the 

 equatorial, being that peculiar description of telescope which has 

 its fixed axis so directed to the pole of the heavens that the tube may 

 be readily made to follow any star by a single motion. There, more- 

 over, he brought into effective employment a mural circle of admirable 

 construction, bearing a telescope which revolves in the plane of the 

 meridian, the whole being rigidly bound into some immovable struct- 

 ure of ponderous masonry. Prof. Airy, in his thirty-fourth year, be- 

 came Astronomer Royal. Thirty-eight years have since elapsed. 

 Under his directions, it is hardly too much to say that the organization 

 of the establishment at Greenwich has been completely transformed. 

 He has given great regularity to its minute and multiform proceedings. 

 He has contrived to establish newer and sounder methods of calcula- 

 tion and publication. He has introduced, constructed, mounted, and 

 employed, a series of novel instruments for the advancement of as- 

 tronomic research. Perhaps the finest transit-circle at present any- 



