Sir George Biddell Airy KCB PRS (/ˈɛəri/; 27 July 1801 – 2 January 1892) was an English mathematician and astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian. His reputation has been tarnished by allegations that, through his inaction, Britain lost the opportunity of priority in the discovery of Neptune.
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Famous quotes containing the word airy:
“Dull sublunary lovers’ love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.
But we by a love so much refined
That our selves know not what it is,
Interassured of the mind,
Careless eyes, lips, and hands to miss.
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.”
—John Donne (1572–1631)