astronomy blog: Biography 2

William Rutter Dawes

William Rutter Dawes was a British astronomer who was born in 1799. As a young man, Dawes trained at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London to become a physician. In 1826, he moved to Liverpool, where he took up an interest in Astronomy. He then became heavily influenced by Rev. Thomas Waffles, which resulted in Dawes taking charge of a small congregation in Ormskirk. In 1929, he returned to his astronomical studies and began to investigate binary stars. Through his studies, Dawes was able to improve upon Sir John Herschel's observations on double stars by refining his 3.8 inch Dolland refractor telescope. Therefore, he was able to collect more accurate data about binaries. He was often nicknamed "eagle eye." Due to bad health and his wife's death, in 1839 Dawes gave up his congregation and moved to London. There he became an assistant to George Bishop in his private observatory. Bishop allowed Dawes to use this observatory, which included a 7 inch refractor telescope, until 1844. He then moved to Kent and was able to build his own personal observatory with 6.5 inch Merz refractor. With this telescope, Dawes helped to discover Saturn's crepe ring. In 1855, he won the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and in 1864 he made detailed drawings of Mars during its opposition. These drawings helped Richard Anthony Proctor make a map of Mars in 1867. Because of his work concerning Mars, craters on both Mars and the Moon are named after Dawes, as well as the optical phenomenon called the Dawes limit. In 1865 he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society and died just a short 4 years later in Haddenham.