Background
Charles Pritchard was born on February 29, 1808, in Alberbury, Shropshire, England.
1886
Pritchard was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his research that he conducted conjointly with Professor Pickering on measuring the relative brightness of 2,784 stars between the North Pole and about -10° declination.
1892
Pritchard was awarded one of the royal medals for his work on photometry and stellar parallax.
Reverend Charles Pritchard (29 February 1808 – 28 May 1893) was a British astronomer, clergyman, and educational reformer.
St John's College, St John's Street, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Pritchard attended St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1830 as the fourth wrangler.
Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, London, England, United Kingdom
Pritchard became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, of which he became an honorary secretary in 1862 and president in 1866.
Royal Society, 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, London, England, United Kingdom
Charles Pritchard was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1840.
Astronomer astrophysicist clergyman educator scientist
Charles Pritchard was born on February 29, 1808, in Alberbury, Shropshire, England.
Pritchard attended Poplar Academy where he was taught by John Stock, the progressive educationalist. At sixteen he was enrolled as a sizar at St John's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1830 as the fourth wrangler.
After the graduation from Cambridge in 1830, Pritchard soon afterward moved to London, where he helped found Clapham Grammar School. He remained in charge of the school until 1862, when he retired to the Isle of Wight. While in London, Pritchard developed an interest in astronomy and erected an observatory at Clapham Grammar School. But although he became an influential member of the Royal Astronomical Society, serving as president in 1866-1868, he had no major research to his credit when, in 1870, he was appointed Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford. Pritchard persuaded the university to provide funds for building an observatory on the edge of the University Parks. When the observatory was completed, it was partly equipped by Warren de la Rue, who donated his own instruments.
The most important aspect of Pritchard’s work at Oxford was his role in convincing the astronomical community that accurate measurements of position could be obtained from photographic plates. One of the first programs he undertook - at de la Rue’s suggestion - was an attempt to determine the lunar librations from photographs of the moon. The final results apparently were never published, but a paper on the moon’s diameter did appear. Pritchard next stressed the possibility of using photography for the determination of stellar parallaxes. He made detailed parallax observations of a few stars, including 61 Cygni, but also employed the method in a more wholesale form to derive an average parallax for all-stars of the second magnitude visible at Oxford. The latter measurements received some criticism, but J. Kapteyn subsequently followed a quite similar approach in his much more extensive and important investigations.
Pritchard’s other major project at Oxford was photometric. He devised a program for measuring the magnitudes of all naked-eye stars up to 100° from the North Pole using a wedge photometer. The results, published in 1886 as Uranometria nova Oxoniensis, paralleled work carried out not long before at the Harvard College Observatory. The agreement between the two sets of results was quite good, thus providing a generally acceptable magnitude sequence for the brighter stars.
During his time at Oxford, Pritchard was also involved in a number of researches of lesser importance such as the determination of a few double star orbits.
Although dependent on all these investigations on research assistants for help, he personally participated in the work as well. He remains one of the very few scientists who carried out all his important research work after the age of sixty.
Pritchard became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, of which he became an honorary secretary in 1862 and president in 1866. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1840.