THE STARS. 15*7 



Scottish astronomer, who has maintained the 

 reputation of Scotland, and also of the Cape 

 Observatory, in this line of research. Born in 

 Aberdeen in 1843, David Gill directed Lord 

 Lindsay's private observatory at Dunecht, in 

 Aberdeenshire, from 1876 to 1879. In the latter 

 year he succeeded Edward James Stone (1831- 

 1897) as Astronomer-Royal at the Cape, a posi- 

 tion which he has since filled with conspicuous 

 ability. From 1881 he has been engaged in the 

 hunt for parallax. In conjunction with William 

 Lewis Elkin (born 1855), now director of Yale 

 College Observatory, he determined the par- 

 allaxes of nine stars with the aid of Lord 

 Lindsay's heliometer. In 1887, with a larger 

 instrument, he resumed the search, while Elkin 

 worked in co-operation with him, but at Yale 

 Observatory, where he undertook the measure- 

 ment of the parallaxes of northern stars. He 

 fixed in 1888 an average parallax for first- 

 magnitude stars, which was determined at 0*089", 

 corresponding to a journey for light of thirty- 

 six years. 



Most of the successful determinations of par- 

 allax have been made by the " relative " method 

 that is, the determination of the displacement 

 of a star in reference to another star, assumed 

 to be situated at an immeasurable distance. 



