Background
Henry Foster was born in 1797 in Woodplumpton, Lancashire, United Kingdom.
geophysicist military scientist
Henry Foster was born in 1797 in Woodplumpton, Lancashire, United Kingdom.
Foster joined the Royal Navy in 1812. Early projects included surveys and, on a trip to South America with Captain Basil Hall, determination of the acceleration of gravity. In 1824 Foster was made lieutenant. He performed most of his investigations while on expeditions to the Arctic in 1824-1825 and to the South Seas in 1828-1831. He spent the winter of 1824-1825 at Port Bowen, north of the Arctic Circle, as an astronomer of an expedition led by Sir William Edward Parry. He studied geomagnetism, the velocity of sound, atmospheric refraction, and the acceleration of gravity. The Board of Longitude printed a detailed account of his observations. In 1827 Foster received the rank of commander. In the spring of 1828, he sailed to the South Seas as commander of a sloop sent on a geophysical expedition, at the suggestion of the Royal Society, to study geomagnetism, gravity, meteorology, and oceanography.
Foster was on many occasions occupied with the indirect measurement of the acceleration of gravity. The project, generally referred to as a determination of the length of a seconds pendulum, was popular at the time and was sponsored officially. Foster used the method recently devised by Henry Kater and observed coincidences between a pendulum of known length and the pendulum of a clock whose rate is determined by astronomical transit measurements. The final object of the observations at various latitudes was a determination of the ellipticity of the earth.
Foster was interested primarily in observations and performed them carefully. He had a minor interest in theory - he speculated, for example, on the source of the diurnal variation in the earth’s magnetic field. He was in some contact with other scientists: at Port Bowen, for example, he repeated some of Samuel Christie’s experiments at the latter’s request.
Foster He drowned in the Chagres River in Panama in 1831 after slipping and falling overboard. His book, published posthumously, was considered very important because of his observations on the southern hemisphere. It was translated into French and republished in 1849.
Foster was a member of the Royal Society London.