History of Astronomy – Refugees, star clusters and relativity: Astronomy at Greenwich during the 1st World War

During the 1914-1918 war the staff of the Royal Observatory was seriously depleted as many of its young men left for military service.

In this talk Dr Lee Macdonald describes how the observatory nevertheless continued to do a surprising amount of important science in these years – including a catalogue of star clusters and organising the eclipse expeditions to Principe and Brazil that confirmed Einstein’s General Theory of relativity.

He also describes how refugees from Belgium and the reintroduction of women at the observatory helped it to continue its work in these years and beyond.

Dr Lee Macdonald FRAS is one of two Sackler Research Fellows working with Royal Museums Greenwich, researching the twentieth-century history of Greenwich Observatory. He is the author of Kew Observatory and the Evolution of Victorian Science, 1840-1910, published in 2018 by the University of Pittsburgh Press, as well as numerous academic articles on the history of astronomy. A long-time amateur astronomer, he is also the author of How to Observe the Sun Safely (Second Edition, Springer, 2012).

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