Henry Crozier Keating Plummer

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Henry Crozier Keating Plummer (October 24, 1875 – September 30, 1946) was a British astronomer.

He was born in Oxford, the son of William Edward Plummer and nephew of the distinguished astronomer John Isaac Plummer. He gained his education at St. Edward's School and then Hertford College. After studies in physics, he became a lecturer at Owen's College, Manchester, instructing in mathematics.

In 1900 he became an assistant at the Oxford University Observatory, where his father had served previously. He remained at the observatory for most of the next twelve years, spending one year at Lick Observatory as a Research Fellow. He was appointed to the position of Astronomer Royal for Ireland in 1912, and served in the Andrews' Chair of Astronomy at Trinity College, Dublin.

He joined the Military College of Science at Woolwich in 1921, as professor of mathematics. He would remain at Woolwich until he retired in 1940, becoming President of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1939 until 1940.

During his career he contributed to the Astrographic Catalogue, and contributed scientific papers. His investigations included photometric observations of short-period variables, and the radial pulsations of cepheid variables. In 1911 he developed a gravitational potential function that can be used to model globular clusters and spherically-symmetric galaxies, known as the Plummer potential. In 1918 he published the work, An Introductory Treatise on Dynamical Astronomy.. He also made studies of the history of science, and served on the Royal Society committee that was formed to publish the papers of Sir Isaac Newton.

[edit] Awards and honors

• Fellow of the Royal Society, 1920
• Plummer crater on the Moon was named after him.

[edit] References

• W. M. Smart, (Plummer, Henry Crozier Keating) Obituary, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 107, Feb. 1947, pp. 56-59.

[edit] External links

• John Isaac Plummer with a brief biography of Henry.