Sir David Gill

The son of an Aberdeen clockmaker, David Gill was intrigued by science from a young age. Studying under James Clerk Maxwell at Marischal College in the 1850s, he became fascinated by the use of telescopes in determining precise time by observing the stars. This set him on a path to become a trailblazing astronomer, culminating in his appointment as Queen Victoria’s Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope where he worked tirelessly to improve the observatory for 27 years.

In 1868, working with pioneering photographer George Washington Wilson, David Gill took one of the first photographs of the Moon. These photographs brought David Gill to the attention of Lord Lindsay, Earl of Crawford and in 1872 he was offered the chance to oversee the observatory at Dunecht. A decade later, he joined the expedition to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean to observe the movement of the planet Venus across the face of the Sun. His aim was to measure the distance of Venus from the Earth and from this to deduce the scale of the solar system. The experiment was not a success but determined to succeed he organised a second trip, this time to Ascension Island, a desolate volcanic outcrop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, when Mars was closer to the Earth than it had been in a century, he successfully calculated the scale of the solar system to within 0.2% of the modern value.

David Gill became a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1883 and was knighted in 1900. Following his retirement in 1906, he was elected as President of the British Science Association in 1907.

Sir David Gill died of pneumonia at his home in London on 24 January 1914.