Edward Walter Maunder (April 12 1851 – March 21 1928) was an English
astronomerAn astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars, and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
best remembered for his study of
sunspotA sunspot is an area on the Sun's surface that is marked by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of reduced surface temperature. They can be visible from Earth without the aid of a telescope...
s and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 that is now known as the
Maunder MinimumThe Maunder Minimum is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum", when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time...
.
Edward Maunder was born in 1851, in London, the youngest child of a minister of the
Wesleyan SocietyJohn Wesley was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, with founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
. He attended
King's College LondonKing's College London is a British higher education institution and co-founding constituent college of the University of London. Founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, its royal charter is predated, in England, only by those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge...
but never graduated. He took a job in a London bank to finance his studies.
Edward Maunder married twice.
Edward Walter Maunder (April 12 1851 – March 21 1928) was an English
astronomerAn astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars, and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
best remembered for his study of
sunspotA sunspot is an area on the Sun's surface that is marked by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection, forming areas of reduced surface temperature. They can be visible from Earth without the aid of a telescope...
s and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 that is now known as the
Maunder MinimumThe Maunder Minimum is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum", when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time...
.
Early and personal life
Edward Maunder was born in 1851, in London, the youngest child of a minister of the
Wesleyan SocietyJohn Wesley was an Anglican cleric and Christian theologian. Wesley is largely credited, along with his brother Charles Wesley, with founding the Methodist movement which began when he took to open-air preaching in a similar manner to George Whitefield...
. He attended
King's College LondonKing's College London is a British higher education institution and co-founding constituent college of the University of London. Founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, its royal charter is predated, in England, only by those of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge...
but never graduated. He took a job in a London bank to finance his studies.
Edward Maunder married twice. In 1873 Edward Maunder returned to the
Royal ObservatoryThe Royal Observatory, Greenwich was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the foundation stone being laid on 10 August...
, taking a position as a
spectroscopicSpectroscopy was originally the study of the interaction between radiation and matter as a function of wavelength . In fact, historically, spectroscopy referred to the use of visible light dispersed according to its wavelength, e.g. by a prism. Later the concept was expanded greatly to comprise...
assistant. Shortly after, in 1875, he married Edith Hannah Bustin, who gave birth to six children. Following the death of Edith Hannah in 1888, he met
Annie Scott Dill RussellAnnie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell was a British astronomer and mathematician.She was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Dill. Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882.Annie received her secondary education...
(1868–1947) in 1890, a mathematician with whom he collaborated for the remainder of his life. In 1895 Maunder and
RussellAnnie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell was a British astronomer and mathematician.She was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Dill. Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882.Annie received her secondary education...
married; they had no children. In 1916
Annie MaunderAnnie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell was a British astronomer and mathematician.She was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Dill. Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882.Annie received her secondary education...
became one of the first women accepted by the Royal Astronomical Society.
Maunder was also an esteemed biblical scholar.
Solar observations
Part of Maunder's job at
the ObservatoryThe Royal Observatory, Greenwich was commissioned in 1675 by King Charles II, with the foundation stone being laid on 10 August...
involved photographing and measuring sunspots, and in doing so he observed that the
solarThe Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Earth and other matter orbit the Sun, which by itself accounts for about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass....
latitudes at which sunspots occur varies in a regular way over the course of the 11 year cycle. After 1891, he was assisted in his work by his second wife,
Annie Scott Dill MaunderAnnie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell was a British astronomer and mathematician.She was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Dill. Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882.Annie received her secondary education...
(née Russell), a
mathematicianA mathematician is a person whose primary area of study and/or research is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with particular problems related to logic, space, transformations, numbers and more general ideas which encompass these concepts...
educated at Girton College in
CambridgeThe city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. It is also at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen....
. She worked as a "lady computer" who at the Observatory from 1890 to 1895. In 1904, he published their results in the form of the "butterfly" diagram.
After studying the work of
Gustav SpörerFriederich Wilhelm Gustav Spörer was a German astronomer.He is noted for his studies of sunspots and sunspot cycles. In this regard he is often mentioned together with Edward Maunder. Spörer was the first to note a prolonged period of low sunspot activity from 1645 to 1715...
, who had identified a period from 1400 to 1510 when sunspots had been rare ("the
Spörer MinimumThe Spörer Minimum was a 90-year span of low solar activity, from about 1460 until 1550, which was identified and named by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum"...
"), he examined old records from the observatory's archives to determine whether there were other such periods. These studies led him in 1893 to announce the
periodThe Maunder Minimum is the name used for the period roughly spanning 1645 to 1715 by John A. Eddy in a landmark 1976 paper published in Science titled "The Maunder Minimum", when sunspots became exceedingly rare, as noted by solar observers of the time...
that now bears his name.
Other astronomical observations
In 1882 Maunder (and some other European astronomers) observed what he called an
"auroral beam"; as yet unexplained, it had some similarity in appearance to either a
noctilucent cloudNoctilucent clouds, are tenuous cloud-like phenomena that are the "ragged-edge" of a much brighter and pervasive polar cloud layer called polar mesospheric clouds in the upper atmosphere, visible in a deep twilight. They are made of crystals of water ice. The name means roughly night shining in Latin...
or an
upper tangent arcAn upper tangent arc is a halo, an atmospheric optical phenomenon which appears over and tangent to the 22° halo around the sun.The shape of an upper tangent arc varies with the elevation of the sun; while the sun is low it appears as an arc over the sun forming a sharp angle...
. However, Maunder wrote that the phenomenon moved rapidly from horizon to horizon, which would rule out a noctilucent cloud or upper tangent arc. Further, upper tangent arc cannot occur during nighttime when the observation was made. Since he made his observation during highly intense auroral activity, he assumed it was some extraordinary auroral phenomenon, though one he had never observed again before or after.
He observed
MarsMars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. It is also referred to as the "Red Planet" because of its reddish appearance, due to iron oxide prevalent on its surface....
and was a sceptic of the notion of
Martian canalsFor a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was believed that there were canals on Mars. These were a network of long straight lines that appeared in drawings of the planet Mars in the equatorial regions from 60° N. to 60° S. Lat., first observed by the Italian astronomer Giovanni...
. He conducted visual experiments using marked circular disks which led him to conclude, correctly, that the viewing of canals arose as an
optical illusionAn optical illusion is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source...
. Also he was convinced that there cannot be life "as in our world" on Mars, as there are no temperature-equating winds and too low mean temperatures.
CratersIn the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with a larger body...
on Mars and
the MoonMaunder is a lunar impact crater that is located on the far side of the Moon, just beyond the western limb. This region is sometimes brought into view during favorable librations, but not much detail can be seen. The crater lies at the northern end of the Mare Orientale, within the ring of...
were named in his and his wife
AnnieAnnie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell was a British astronomer and mathematician.She was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Dill. Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882.Annie received her secondary education...
's honours.
Establishment of the British Astronomical Association
In 1890, Maunder was a driving force in the foundation of the
British Astronomical AssociationThe British Astronomical Association, BAA, is the senior national association of amateur astronomers in the UK.It was founded in London in 1890. It encourages observational astronomy by non-professionals in areas which cannot be covered by professional observatories...
. Although he had been fellow of the
Royal Astronomical SocietyThe Royal Astronomical Society is a learned society that began as the Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to support astronomical research . It became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 on receiving its Royal Charter from William IV...
since 1875, Maunder wanted an association of astronomers open to every person interested in astronomy, from every class of society, and especially open for women.
Edward Maunder was the first editor of the Journal of the
BAAThe British Astronomical Association, BAA, is the senior national association of amateur astronomers in the UK.It was founded in London in 1890. It encourages observational astronomy by non-professionals in areas which cannot be covered by professional observatories...
, an office later taken by his wife
Annie MaunderAnnie Scott Dill Maunder, née Russell was a British astronomer and mathematician.She was born in Strabane, County Tyrone, Ireland to William Andrew Russell and Hessy Nesbitt Dill. Her father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Strabane until 1882.Annie received her secondary education...
. His older brother, Thomas Frid Maunder (1841–1935), was a co-founder, and secretary of the
the AssociationThe British Astronomical Association, BAA, is the senior national association of amateur astronomers in the UK.It was founded in London in 1890. It encourages observational astronomy by non-professionals in areas which cannot be covered by professional observatories...
for 38 years.
Further reading
- Willie Wei-Hock Soon and Steven H. Yaskell: The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection, World Scientific, 2003, ISBN 981-238-274-7
by Hector Macpherson, London: Gall & Inglis, 1905
- A. J. Kinder "Edward Walter Maunder His Life and Times" Journal of the British Astronomical Association" Vol. 118 (1) 21-42 (2008).
External links