John Brinkley

RAS obituary

Dr. Brinkley, Bishop of Cloyne, was for a long time Andrews Professor of Astronomy at Trinity College, Dublin, and Director of the Observatory near that city. Indeed, he had spent so much of the latter period of his life in Ireland, that he has been considered by some as a native of that country. He was however born in England, and of English parents. He distinguished himself in early life at the University of Cambridge, where he was the senior wrangler of 1788. He was for a short time an assistant at the observatory of Greenwich, where probably he acquired the taste for astronomy which he afterwards cultivated with so much success: and it is to this circumstance also that he was indebted for the appointment of Director of the Observatory in Ireland. For when Dr. Maskelyne was requested to point out the most qualified person that he knew, as a successor to Usher, he instantly named Brinkley. The observatory at that time was furnished only with a transit; and this state of comparative leisure gave him opportunities of attaining greater proficiency in transcendental mathematics than most of his English contemporaries, and at a much earlier period. Most of his papers on subjects of this nature are inserted in the Memoirs of the Royal Irish Academy, and are highly valued by those who are conversant with such inquiries. On the erection of the circle he applied himself more assiduously to practical astronomy: and justly estimating the powers and advantages of such an instrument, he devoted his time to the elucidation of certain minute subjects in astronomy which had hitherto either evaded the researches of former observers, or had been the subject of much doubt and even con-troversy: such as the aberration and parallax of the fixed stars, the solar and lunar nutation, and the determination of astronomical refraction, more especially at low altitudes. In the investigation of these subjects we trace the same master-hand as in all his other inquiries and although the result of his deductions relative to the subject of parallax does not appear to accord with that obtained from the mural circle at Greenwich, yet so highly did the Royal Society estimate the talent and skill displayed in the inquiry, that they awarded him the Copley medal for his paper on this subject. The constants of aberration and lunar nutation, determined by Dr. Brinkley, are those which have been adopted by this Society, in the formation of their catalogue of stars; the former deduced from 2633, and the latter from 1618 comparisons of various stars. This attempt to deduce from observation the constant of solar nutation (the existence of which was only known from theory) is at once a proof of his skill in the manipulation of the instrument, and of his confidence in its accuracy and its powers. His tables of refraction, when adapted to the external thermometer, are found to possess a degree of merit far above what has been generally attri-buted to them. In private life, Dr. Brinkley was remarkable for the kindness of his disposition, and the urbanity and mildness of his manners; and was ever ready to communicate information to the zealous and earnest inquirer after knowledge. On his promo-tion to the see of Cloyne he devoted himself almost entirely to ecclesiastical affairs; and for the last ten years he had not contri-buted a paper to any scientific society. He was for a long time the President of the Royal Irish Academy; and for two years also filled the chair of this Society. He died on the 13th of September last, at an advanced age.

John Brinkley's obituary appeared in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 3:2 (1933), 148-149.