William Rutter Dawes (19 March 1799 – 15 February 1868) was an English astronomer.

Biography

Dawes was born at Christ's Hospital then in the City of London (it moved to

Horsham Horsham is a market town on the upper reaches of the River Arun on the fringe of the Weald in West Sussex, England. The town is south south-west of London, north-west of Brighton and north-east of the county town of Chichester. Nearby to ...

, West Sussex in 1902), the son of William Dawes, also an astronomer, and Judith Rutter. He qualified as a doctor in 1825. On 29 October 1828 he was ordained pastor at an Independent chapel in Burscough Street, Ormskirk, Lancashire,Nightingale, Benjamin, ''Lancashire nonconformity, or, Sketches, historical & descriptive, of the Congregational and old Presbyterian churches in the county''. John Heywood, 1890-1893,
200-2
/ref> formerly part of a silk factory. A new chapel, in Chapel Street, was opened in 1834. Dawes resigned as pastor in December 1837 due to ill health. When, in 1843, the chapel got into financial difficulties due to the debt owing after its construction, Dawes came to their aid.

Astronomy

Dawes made extensive measurements of

double star In observational astronomy, a double star or visual double is a pair of stars that appear close to each other as viewed from Earth, especially with the aid of optical telescopes. This occurs because the pair either forms a binary star (i.e. a bi ...

s as well as observations of planets. He was a friend of William Lassell. He was nicknamed "eagle eyed". He set up his private observatory at his home, Hopefield House, built 1856-7 in

Haddenham, Buckinghamshire Haddenham is a village and civil parish in west Buckinghamshire, England. It is about south-west of Aylesbury and north-east of Thame in neighbouring Oxfordshire. At the 2011 Census, the population of the civil parish was 4,502. History The ...

. One of his telescopes, an eight-inch (200mm) aperture refractor by Cooke, survives at the

Cambridge Observatory Cambridge Observatory is an astronomical observatory at the University of Cambridge in the East of England. It was established in 1823 and is now part of the site of the Institute of Astronomy. The old Observatory building houses the Institute o ...

, now part of the Institute of Astronomy where it is known as the Thorrowgood Telescope. Proctor Richard Anthony Other Worlds Mars Chart 1896

He made extensive drawings of Mars during its 1864 opposition. In 1867,

Richard Anthony Proctor Richard Anthony Proctor (23 March 1837 – 12 September 1888) was an English astronomer. He is best remembered for having produced one of the earliest maps of Mars in 1867 from 27 drawings by the English observer William Rutter Dawes. His map w ...

made a map of Mars based on these drawings. Proctor named two features after Dawes. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1830 and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1865, for his astronomical work.Dawes, William Rutter: certificate of election to the Royal Society
/ref> Proposers for his Royal Society Fellowship included G B Airy and J F W Herschel.

Awards

He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1855.

Legacy

Dawes Dawes may refer to: Places *Dawes (Parish), New South Wales, Australia *Dawes Point, New South Wales, Australia *Dawes Arboretum, in Newark, Ohio, U.S. *Dawes County, Nebraska, U.S. * Dawes Township, Thurston County, Nebraska, U.S. Other uses *Daw ...

crater Crater may refer to: Landforms *Impact crater, a depression caused by two celestial bodies impacting each other, such as a meteorite hitting a planet *Explosion crater, a hole formed in the ground produced by an explosion near or below the surfac ...

s on the Moon and

crater on Mars are named after him, as is a gap within

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

's C Ring, formerly labelled 1.495 R_S. An optical phenomenon, the

Dawes limit Dawes' limit is a formula to express the maximum resolving power of a microscope or telescope. It is so named after its discoverer, W. R. Dawes ,Dawes, W.R., ''Catalogue of Micrometrical Measurements of Double Stars.'' In: Memoirs of the Royal ...

, is named after him.

Family

Dawes married twice. His first wife was Mary Scott née Egerton (1764-1840). They married on 13 January 1824 at Haddenham, Buckinghamshire. She was the widow of his tutor,

Thomas Scott Thomas Scott may refer to: Australia * Thomas Hobbes Scott (1783–1860), Anglican clergyman and first Archdeacon of New South Wales * Thomas Scott (Australian politician) (1865–1946), member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly * Thomas Sco ...

. On 28 July 1842 Dawes married Ann Welsby née Coupland (1805-1860).Marriott, R A
Dawes, William Rutter (1799–1868)
''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (via libraries) She was the widow of Ormskirk solicitor John Welsby (1800-1839) whom she had married on 16 January 1824.England Marriages 1538-1973, findmypast (subscription required)

Selected writings

References

External links

*

- Awarding of RAS gold medal

- Obituary

- Brief biography * McKim, R., Marriott, R. A.,
Dawes' Observations Of Mars, 1864-65
, ''Journal of the British Astronomical Association'', vol.98, no.6, p.294-300, October 1988. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dawes, William Rutter 1799 births 1868 deaths 19th-century British astronomers Recipients of the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society Fellows of the Royal Society