io 4 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" Sound ; " and in 1 870 his treatise on " Magnetism." Sir George Airy's 

 well-known work on "Trigonometry " was published in 1855. Another 

 work of his, entitled "Figure of the Earth," has yet to be named, as 

 well as the luminous paper on " Tides and Waves," contributed by 

 him, first of all, to the " Encyclopaedia Metropolitana." Even while 

 simply Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge his " Astronomical Ob- 

 servations," issuing from the press between 1829 and 1838, extended 

 to nine quarto volumes, and were adopted at once as models for that 

 class of publication. 



Sir George Airy has received the Lalande Gold Medal of the French 

 Institute in honor of his important discoveries in astronomy. For his 

 successful optical theories he has had awarded to him the Copley Gold 

 Medal of the Royal Society. The Royal Gold Medal of the same so- 

 ciety has been given to him in recompense for his tidal investigations. 

 Twice the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society has been 

 his first, for his discovery of an inequality of long period in the 

 movements of Venus and the earth ; secondly, in return for his reduc- 

 tion of the planetary observations. He has been enrolled among the 

 most honored members of the Royal Astronomical Society, of the 

 Cambridge Philosophical Society, and of the Institute of Civil Engi- 

 neers. For many years past he has been among the foreign corre- 

 spondents of the Institute of France, as well as of several other scien- 

 tific academies on the Continent. He has received honorary degrees 

 of D. C. L. and LL. D. from each of the three great universities Ox- 

 ford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. On May 17, 1872, Sir George was 

 gazetted a Knight of the Bath. His claim upon the remembrance of 

 posterity, however, will be that of having occupied with distinguished 

 ability the post of Astronomer Royal of Great Britain during consid- 

 erably more than the lifetime of a whole generation. 



The Illustrated Iievieic, a London biographical and literary pe- 

 riodical, to which we are indebted for the preceding statements, re- 

 marks that, since the death of Sir John Herschel, on the 11th of May, 

 1871, Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal, is the admitted master 

 of the sublime science. There are other eminent English astronomers 

 as John Hinde, the discoverer of many asteroids, and John Adams, 

 also a Cambridge Senior Wrangler and the rival of Urban Leverrier, 

 who groped his way by mathematical calculation to the discovery of 

 the position of the hitherto unknown planet Neptune. If incidents as 

 brilliant and remarkable as these are wanting in the history of Sir 

 George Airy, his claims to respect are equally valuable, solid, and en- 

 during. 



