David Gill

The lecture on astronomical photography at the Royal Institution on 4 June 1887 saw the entry in to Agnes Clerke's life of one who became a close friend as well as an important influence – David Gill, Her Majesty's Astronomer and Director of the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa.

David Gill, one of the leading astronomers of the nineteenth century, was another of those who started his career as an amateur. Agnes Clerke described him perfectly as‘an astronomer by irresistible impulse’ who, like Bessel [the great German mathematician and astronomer who first succeeded in measuring the distance to a star] ‘exchanged lucrative mercantile pursuits for the scanty emoluments awaiting the votaries of the stars’. Gill, A Scotsman from Aberdeen, studied mathematics and physics at Marischal College, University of Aberdeen, but left without completing his degree to take over the management of the family watch-making business. The necessity of regulating and setting his time-keepers led him to take a practical interest in astronomy and eventually to establish a public time-service for the city of Aberdeen – as Agnes Clerke's father had done on a smaller scale in Skibbereen. Astronomy soon became his all-absorbing passion, and when in 1872 the wealthy nobleman and astronomer Lord Lindsay (later Lord Crawford) decided to establish a fully modern observatory on his father's estate in Aberdeenshire, Gill leaped at the chance of joining him, despite the threat of insecurity and a much reduced income.