Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/117

 lecture-room. In this contest Airy and Babbage first came into conflict.

It was the next year (1827) that Airy's path first intersected that of Hamilton. Dr. Brinkley, the professor of astronomy at Dublin had been made a bishop. Airy went over to Dublin to see about the appointment: finding that the electors desired to appoint W. R. Hamilton, although still an undergraduate, he retired. The following year the Plumian professorship of astronomy and experimental philosophy at Cambridge fell vacant, the salary of which was £300. Airy applied, and before he was elected took the extraordinary course of applying for an increase of salary. He was anxious to secure an income on which he could marry—a difficult thing in the constitution of the University. His good fortune did not fail him; he was elected and the salary raised to £500. He had now charge of the College Observatory, and a residence, to which two years later he brought Richarda Smith from Edensor. For eight years he lived and worked in the Cambridge Observatory. One of his first scientific works was a repetition along with Whewell of the pendulum experiments in the Dolcoath mine. Misfortune again attended the inquiry. A few days after the observations had been started, a mass of rock settled in the mine, stopping the pumps and allowing the water to accumulate; sufficient time was not left to complete the observations, and the result was again nugatory. After one year at the Observatory Airy began to publish his astronomical observations, first of all devising an orderly system of exhibition, then "quite a novelty in astronomical publications."

In 1832 a committee of the newly founded British Association asked Airy to prepare the report on Astronomy for the next meeting to be held at Oxford. This he did, and read part of it at the meeting. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, secretary of the Association, deprecated the tone of the report as relating to English astronomers; but Airy refused to alter a word. About this time Sir James South, the astronomer, on removing to a house in Kensington, bought a 12-inch achromatic telescope in Paris and employed Troughton & Simms of London to mount it