X-Nico

3 unusual facts about Radcliffe Observatory


Henry Keene

Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford - begun, 1772-6 (completed by Keene's son Theodosius, under the direction of James Wyatt, 1794)

Radcliffe Observatory

Radcliffe Observatory was the astronomical observatory of the University of Oxford from 1773 until 1934, when the Radcliffe Trustees sold it and erected a new observatory in Pretoria, South Africa.

Eventually that site, in Pretoria, also became untenable and the facility was combined with others into the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) in the 1970s.


Edward James Stone

He successfully observed the total solar eclipse of 8 August 1896 at Novaya Zemlya, and intended a voyage to India for the eclipse of 1898, but died suddenly at the Radcliffe Observatory.

John L. Climenhaga

Following his service as an administrator, Climenhaga spent a sabbatical in 1972 and 1973 carrying out research at the University of Tokyo, the Radcliffe Observatory in South Africa and the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland.


see also

David Stanley Evans

Evans left England in 1946 to work at the Radcliffe Observatory, Pretoria, South Africa when positional determinations and photometry were the main interests of the astronomical world, but when he left some twenty years later, the South African observatories had become active in astrophysics.