Richard Anthony Proctor

Half-hours with the Telescope (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) Richard Anthony Proctor Illustrated, Ill edition

Richard Anthony Proctor (1837-1888), British astronomer, was born at Chelsea. He is best remembered for having produced one of the earliest maps of Mars in 1867 from 27 drawings by the British observer William Rutter Dawes. A crater on Mars is named after him. In 1865 published an article on the Colors of Double Stars in the Cornhill Magazine. His first book Saturn and his System was published in the same year, at his own expense. This work contains an elaborate account of the phenomena presented by the planet. In 1881 he founded Knowledge, a popular weekly magazine of science, which had a considerable circulation. In it he wrote on a great variety of subjects, including chess and whist. He was also the author of the articles on astronomy in the American Cyclopaedia. His largest and most ambitious work, Old and New Astronomy, unfortunately left unfinished at his death, was completed by A. Cowper Ranyard and published in 1892. Amongst his other books are Halfhours with the Telescope (1868) and Mysteries of Time and Space (1883).