Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 52.djvu/19

Sheepshanks His portrait was painted four times: by Jackson, as a young man; by A. Geddes, now at Winsley Hurst, near Ripley, Yorkshire; and twice by W. Mulready, R.A. One of Mulready's portraits is at South Kensington, and the other in the possession of a nephew, the Rev. Thomas Sheepshanks of Harrogate.

[Official catalogues of National Gallery of Art at South Kensington; Art Journal, 1863 p. 241, 1857 p. 239; thanks are also due to the Rev. Thomas Sheepshanks.]

 SHEEPSHANKS, RICHARD (1794–1855), astronomer, was the fourth son and sixth child of Joseph Sheepshanks, a cloth manufacturer in Leeds, Yorkshire, by his wife Anne, daughter of Richard Wilson of Kendal, and was born at Leeds on 30 July 1794. John Sheepshanks [q. v.] was his brother. Educated at Richmond school in the same county under James Tate, whose intimate friend he became, he formed, with William Whewell, Adam Sedgwick, Connop Thirlwall, and others, the brilliant group known later at Cambridge as the ‘Northern Lights.’ Sheepshanks entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1812, graduated as tenth wrangler in 1816, and proceeded M.A. in 1819. He was elected fellow of his college in 1817, and, never marrying, retained the fellowship till his death. He was called to the bar in 1825, took orders in the church of England in 1828, but practised neither profession, the comparative affluence in which his father's death left him permitting him to follow instead his scientific vocation. He joined the Astronomical Society on 14 Jan. 1825, and, as its secretary from 1829 onwards, edited for many years and greatly improved its ‘Monthly Notices.’ In 1830 the Royal Society admitted him to membership, and two years later elected him to its council. He took part in 1828 in Sir George Airy's pendulum-operations in Dolcoath mine, Cornwall, rendered abortive by subterranean floods, and about the same time actively promoted the establishment of the Cambridge observatory. Appointed in 1831 a commissioner for revising borough boundaries under the Reform Act, he visited and determined most of those between the Thames and Humber. His advice in favour of suppressing the imperfect edition of Stephen Groombridge's ‘Circumpolar Catalogue’ was acted on by the admiralty in 1833; and he was entrusted with the reduction of the astronomical observations made by Lieutenant Murphy during General Chesney's survey of the Euphrates valley in 1835–6.

Sheepshanks took a prominent part in the South equatoreal case as scientific adviser on the side of Edward Troughton [q. v.] The hostile relations between him and Sir James South [q. v.], which began with disputes at the council board of the Astronomical Society, were thereby embittered; and Charles Babbage [q. v.], another of his foes, wrote a chapter on ‘The Intrigues of Science’ in his ‘Exposition of 1851,’ consisting mainly of a violent attack upon him and Sir George Airy, both of whom he suspected of having adversely influenced the government as regards his calculating machine. South then published in the ‘Mechanics' Magazine’ for 24 Jan. 1852 a maliciously embellished account of a smuggling transaction by which Sheepshanks had introduced in 1823 from Paris to London a Jecker's circle with Troughton's name engraved upon it. Babbage sent copies to the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society, ‘as a sort of impeachment,’ and even brought the matter before the board of visitors of the Royal Observatory, to which Sheepshanks belonged. He defended himself, admitting and regretting the fraud upon the custom-house, but denying the alleged aggravating circumstances, in a lengthy and abusive ‘Letter in Reply to the Calumnies of Mr. Babbage’ (1854). This was one of several ‘piquant pamphlets’ which ‘remain to illustrate the science of our century, and will furnish ample materials to the future collector of our literary curiosities’. Another dealt with the award of the ‘Neptune medal;’ a third, in 1845, with the affairs of the Liverpool observatory. ‘When asked why he allowed himself to enter into such disputes, he would reply that he was just the person for it; that he had leisure, courage, and contempt for opinion when he knew he was right’ (De Morgan in Examiner, 8 Sept. 1855).

Sheepshanks was a member of the royal commissions on weights and measures in 1838 and 1843, and was entrusted in 1844, after the death of Francis Baily [q. v.], with the reconstruction of the standard of length. The work, for which he accepted no payment, occupied eleven laborious years. It was carried on in a cellar beneath the Astronomical Society's rooms in Somerset House, and involved the registration of nearly ninety thousand micrometrical readings. In order to insure their accuracy he constructed his own standard thermometers by a process communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society in June 1851 (Monthly Notices, xi. 233). His succinct account of the whole series of operations was embodied in the report of the commissioners presented to