228 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Manuel John Johnson, the late Director of the Radcliffe Obser- 

 vatory, Oxford, was, by a disease of the heart, suddenly removed from 

 the scene of his important labors, on the 28th 'day of February last. 

 He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of this Academy only 

 about two years before ; and, from his early death, it has hap- 

 pened that his name does not appear upon any published list of our 

 actual members. Educated at Addiscombe, Mr. Johnson entered the 

 Royal Artillery in the year 1821, and it was while stationed on mil- 

 itary duty at St. Helena that his taste and talent for astronomical 

 observation unfolded. Here his leisure, during a residence of ten 

 years, was turned to good account in collecting materials for his St. 

 Helena Catalogue of the mean places of six hundi'ed and six principal 

 fixed stars of the Southern Hemisphere, which was published in 1835 ; 

 a work which, from its sharp accuracy, won for its author at once an 

 enviable reputation. On his return to England he was entered, at a 

 later age than is common, at Magdalen Hall, Oxford ; and in 1839, im- 

 mediately upon taking his degree, he received the appointment of Rad- 

 cliffe Observer, and began the labors which have raised the Radcliffe 

 Observatory to its present high rank. Established in this favorable 

 position, he immediately commenced his principal scientific undertak- 

 ing, the determination, upon a regular and most judicious plan, of the 

 places of the close ckcum polar and the chief northern stars, as far as to 

 the 45th degree of declination. This undertaking he consistently and 

 most persistently carried out, for nineteen years, in each of which a 

 volume of his " Radcliffe Observations " promptly made its appearance. 

 This work was virtually finished, and its value is everywhere recognized 

 from the portions which have long been in use. It only remained to 

 crown the whole by the combination of all the results into a sytematic 

 catalogue. Even this was well-nigh done ; and the first proofs of the 

 volume which was to embody this consummation lay before him, when 

 his hand was suddenly arrested by death. 



In his employment of the heliometer, — the most complex of astro- 

 nomical instruments ; in the choice and plan of liis investigations ; 

 in the refinement of his methods and the rigorous exactness of his 

 observations ; in the soundness of his judgment ; and, not least, in the 

 conscientious faithfulness and patience with which he assumed and 

 endured such unremitting toil, without making, and without expecting 

 to make, any brilliant discoveries, — he is thought to have manifested the 



