P. B. Molesworth
Contents
P. B. Molesworth
(lunar scientist)A military engineer by professional and amateur astronomer by avocation, Percy Braybrooke Molesworth was one of the most skilled and accurate visual observers of the Moon and planets during the late 19th century.
Birth
April 2, 1867, Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)
Death
December 25, 1908, Trincomali, Ceylon
Education
- Winchester College, England
- Royal Military Academies, Woolwich and Chatham
Images
Career
The son of a noted civil engineer, Molesworth was himself a commissioned officer in th British Corps of Royal Engineers, passing through the ranks of Lieutenant, Captain and Major, stationed in Ireland, Hong Kong and finally in Ceylon, where he had an equatorially-mounted 12-3/4 inch Calver reflector (see illustrations in McKim, 1997 and Baum, 2007). An avid planetary observer, he was a member of the BAA from its inception in 1890 and elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on June 10, 1898.
Lunar Contributions
- In a review of historic sketches of the craterlets on the floor of Plato, Charles Wood regarded Molesworth's contribution, recording about nine, as the most accurate. For original sources see:
- Goodacre, Walter. Seventh Report of the Section for the Observation of the Moon. Mem. Brit. Astron. Assoc. 20(3), pp. 94-98 (Plates II and IV) and also p. 109 (Straight Wall observation). (this report mentions Molesworth's earlier 9-1/4 inch Calver reflector)
Publications
LPOD
Biographical Resources
- Wikipedia
- Anon. 1909. Obiturary Notices. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 69, pp. 248-249.
- Anon. 1909. Note. The Observatory 32, p. 108. (copied from Nature).
- Anon. 1909. JBAA, 19, 143.
- Baum, Richard. 2007. Insights into enthusiasm: The 1897-1898 Venus notebooks of P. B. Molesworth. Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol.117, no.1, pp. 9-21. (contains photo of Molesworth in Figure 1)
- Clarke, A. C. 1976. Captain P. B. Molesworth. Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol. 87, p. 518.
- McKim, R. J. 1997. P. B. Molesworth's discovery of the great South Tropical Disturbance on Jupiter, 1901 Journal of the British Astronomical Association, vol. 107, no.5, pp. 239- 245. (contains portrait of Molesworth from Antionadi, 1910 as Figure 1)
- Antionadi, E. M. 1910. Report of the Mars Section, 1903. Memoirs of the British Astronomical Association 16(4), 54.
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