Ralph Allen Sampson

Ralph Allen Sampson (born June 25, 1866 in Schull , County Cork , Ireland , † November 7, 1939 in Bath ) was a British astronomer .

Sampson was one of five children of a Cornish chemist. Due to bad investments in a mine in Cornwall, the family (the father died early) lived in difficult circumstances, so that he could not attend school in Liverpool until he was 14 years old. There he shone through his achievements, especially in mathematics. He studied from 1884 on a scholarship at St John's College (Cambridge) with the degree in 1888. He was u. a. a student of John Couch Adams who was his tutor on the Tripos math exams where he became Third Wrangler in 1888. In 1889 he received the Smith Prize and became a Fellow of St. John's College. In 1891 he received the Isaac Newton Studentship in astronomy and physical optics. He published on hydrodynamics and astrophysics (models of the internal structure of the sun), among other things, on currents through circular holes in plates ( Sampson flow ). In 1895 he became professor of mathematics at Durham College in Newcastle upon Tyne . In 1895 he became professor of mathematics at Durham (that is, in the part of the university located in Durham, the later University of Durham ) and became director of the observatory in Durham. In 1910 he became Astronomer Royal for Scotland and Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh . In 1937 he retired for health reasons and moved to Bath.

He pioneered the measurement of the color temperature of stars. He also developed theories about the movement of the four Galilean moons , for which he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1928 . At that time there were discrepancies between the observations - for which Sampson evaluated the observations of the Harvard College Observatory - and the celestial mechanical predictions. In 1910 he published tables of the positions of the four moons of Jupiter from 1850 to 2000 and in 1921 his book Theory of the four great satellites of Jupiter (Royal Astronomical Society, London) appeared. In Edinburgh he dealt in particular with time measurement (he was the first President of the Commission de l'heure ) and geometric optics and the elimination of optical errors in telescopes.

He also published the unpublished manuscripts of John Couch Adams as part of the work edition in 1900. Mainly because of this, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1903 . In 1911 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh , whose General Secretary he was from 1923 to 1933 and whose Keith Prize he received in 1919. In 1915 he received the Hopkins Prize from the Cambridge Philosophical Society. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Durham (D. Sc.) And the University of Glasgow (LL.D).

From 1915 to 1917 he was President of the Royal Astronomical Society .

The moon crater Sampson was named after him.

He had been married since 1894 and had three daughters (including the cellist Peggie Sampson ) and a son.

Web links

• Publications by RA Sampson in the Astrophysics Data System
• John J. O'Connor, Edmund F. Robertson :  Ralph Allen Sampson. In: MacTutor History of Mathematics archive .
• Awarding of RAS Gold Medal: MNRAS 88 (1928) 334
• Awarding of RAS Gold Medal: Obs 51 (1928) 65
• MNRAS 100 (1940) 258-263
• Obs 63 (1940) 105 (one paragraph)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sampson, Ralph Allen  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Venn, J. & JA, Alumni Cantabrigienses , Cambridge University Press , 10 vols, 1922–1958.