Edward Walter Maunder (April 12, 1851 – March 21, 1928) was an English astronomer best remembered for his study of sunspots and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 that is now known as the Maunder Minimum.
Early and personal life
Edward Maunder was born in 1851, in London, the youngest child of a minister of the Wesleyan Society. He attended King's College London but never graduated. He took a job in a London bank to finance his studies.
Edward Maunder married twice. In 1873 Edward Maunder returned to the Royal Observatory, taking a position as a spectroscopic assistant. Shortly after, in 1875, he married Edith Hannah Bustin, who gave birth to six children. Following the death of Edith Hannah in 1888, he met Annie Scott Dill Russell (1868–1947) in 1890, a mathematician with whom he collaborated for the remainder of his life. In 1895 Maunder and Russell married; they had no children. In 1916 Annie Maunder became one of the first women accepted by the Royal Astronomical Society.
Maunder was also an esteemed biblical scholar.
Solar observations
Figure 2: A modern version of the Mauders' sunspot "butterfly diagram". (
This version from the solar group at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.)
Part of Maunder's job at the Observatory involved photographing and measuring sunspots, and in doing so he observed that the solar latitudes at which sunspots occur varies in a regular way over the course of the 11 year cycle. After 1891, he was assisted in his work by his second wife, Annie Scott Dill Maunder (née Russell), a mathematician educated at Girton College in Cambridge. She worked as a "lady computer" who at the Observatory from 1890 to 1895. In 1904, he published their results in the form of the "butterfly" diagram.
After studying the work of Gustav Spörer, who had identified a period from 1400 to 1510 when sunspots had been rare ("the Spörer Minimum"), he examined old records from the observatory's archives to determine whether there were other such periods. These studies led him in 1893 to announce the period that now bears his name.
Other astronomical observations
Strange phenomenon on November 17, 1882, observed and described by Maunder in
The Observatory, June 1883 (pp. 192-193) and April 1916 (pp. 213-215), which he termed an "auroral beam" and "a strange celestial visitor." Drawing by astronomer and
aurora expert Rand Capron,
Guildown Observatory,
Surrey, UK, who also observed it. From
Philosophical Magazine, May 1883.
In 1882 Maunder (and some other European astronomers) observed what he called an "auroral beam"; as yet unexplained, it had some similarity in appearance to either a noctilucent cloud or an upper tangent arc.[1] However, Maunder wrote that the phenomenon moved rapidly from horizon to horizon, which would rule out a noctilucent cloud or upper tangent arc. Further, upper tangent arc cannot occur during nighttime when the observation was made. Since he made his observation during highly intense auroral activity, he assumed it was some extraordinary auroral phenomenon, though one he had never observed again before or after.
He observed Mars and was a sceptic of the notion of Martian canals. He conducted visual experiments using marked circular disks which led him to conclude, correctly, that the viewing of canals arose as an optical illusion. Also he was convinced that there cannot be life "as in our world" on Mars, as there are no temperature-equating winds and too low mean temperatures. Craters on Mars and the Moon were named in his and his wife Annie's honours.
Establishment of the British Astronomical Association
In 1890, Maunder was a driving force in the foundation of the British Astronomical Association. Although he had been fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society since 1875, Maunder wanted an association of astronomers open to every person interested in astronomy, from every class of society, and especially open for women.
Edward Maunder was the first editor of the Journal of the BAA, an office later taken by his wife Annie Maunder. His older brother, Thomas Frid Maunder (1841–1935), was a co-founder, and secretary of the the Association for 38 years.
Publications
- Maunder, E. W. (1904). "Note on the Distribution of Sun-Spots in Heliographic Latitude, 1874-1902". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 64: 747 – 761.
- Maunder, E. (1908). Astronomy of the Bible: An Elementary Commentary on the Astronomical References in the Holy Scripture. New York: Mitchell Kennerley.
- Maunder, A. and E. (1910). The Heavens and their Story. London: Charles H. Kelly.
- Maunder, E. Walter (1912). The Science of the Stars. London: T.C. and E.C. Jack.
References
Further reading
- Willie Wei-Hock Soon and Steven H. Yaskell: The Maunder Minimum and the Variable Sun-Earth Connection, World Scientific, 2003, ISBN 981-238-274-7
- A. J. Kinder "Edward Walter Maunder His Life and Times" Journal of the British Astronomical Association" Vol. 118 (1) 21-42 (2008).
External links
| Persondata |
| NAME |
Maunder, Edward |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES |
|
| SHORT DESCRIPTION |
English astronomer studying sunspots |
| DATE OF BIRTH |
April 12, 1851 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH |
London |
| DATE OF DEATH |
March 21, 1928 |
| PLACE OF DEATH |
|
