Manuel John Johnson

Background

Manuel John Johnson was born on April 23, 1805, in Macao, China. His father was an Englishman named John William Johnson.

Education

As a boy, Johnson attended Addiscombe College, a military school located near Croydon, just south of London, where cadets were prepared for service in the British East India Company.

In December 1835 he enrolled as an undergraduate in Magdalen College, Oxford. He graduated as Bachelor of Arts in 1839 and as a Master of Arts in 1842.

Career

At age sixteen, with the rank of lieutenant, he was assigned to an artillery division stationed on Saint Helena. With time on his hands at this isolated place, Johnson began to study the heavens. He was encouraged in this pursuit by the governor of Saint Helena, General Alexander Walker, to whom he had been assigned as aide-de-camp. Funds to build and equip an observatory were provided by the East India Company; and Johnson was sent twice to Cape Town, in 1825 and again in 1829, to get advice from Fearon Fallows, then a royal astronomer at the recently established Cape of Good Hope observatory.

The observatory on Saint Helena was completed in 1829. During the next four years, Johnson made the observations that formed the basis of his Catalogue of 606 Principal Fixed Stars of the Southern Hemisphere, published in 1835 at the expense of the East India Company.

Saint Helena was returned to the British crown in 1834. The artillery unit was disbanded, and Johnson returned to England on a pension.

When the Radcliffe observer, Stephen Peter Rigaud, died early in 1839, Johnson applied for the position and obtained it; in October 1839 he took up residence in the Radcliffe Observatory (then in the northwest suburbs of Oxford but transferred about a century later to Pretoria, South Africa). He remained there until his death twenty years later.

As Radcliffe observer, Johnson, with the initial help of Sir Robert Peel (one of the Radcliffe trustees), reequipped the observatory, buying telescopes and a heliometer, and - starting out only to revise Groombridge’s catalogue - assembled material for his Radcliffe Catalogue of 6317 Stars, Chiefly Circumpolar. He also continued the meteorological observations begun by Rigaud and made many differential measurements with the heliometer.

Achievements

• Manuel John Johnson distinguished himself as a prominent astronomer who is remembered for his service at Radcliffe Observatory. He is probably best known for his Catalogue of 606 Principal Fixed Stars in the Southern Hemisphere which described positions of southern hemisphere stars.
  
  In February 1835 he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for his star catalogue.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Radcliffe catalogue of 6317 stars 1860
  • A Catalogue of 606 Principal Fixed Stars in the Southern Hemisphere Deduced from Observations Made at the Observatory, St. Helena, from November 1829 to April 1833 1835

Membership

Johnson was elected to fellowship in the Royal Society in 1856 and served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1856-1857.

Connections

In 1850 Johnson married Caroline Ogle, the daughter of Doctor James Ogle; together they had several children.

Father:

John William Johnson

Spouse:

Caroline Ogle

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Volume 7
  1973