[BITList] Chasing shadows

[John Feltham]

To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2013-08-06



Brown,  Elizabeth  (1830-1899), astronomer and meteorologist, was born on 6 August 1830 at Further Barton, Hampton Road, Cirencester, Gloucestershire, the elder of the two daughters of Thomas Crowther Brown (1772?-1883), a wine merchant and amateur meteorologist, and his wife, Jemimah. The family was comfortably off and Elizabeth was taught at home by a governess; later she studied extensively and persistently on her own, reading both science and literature. Her mother died when she was still a child and she was very close to her father, who taught her how to watch the sky for meteorological information and use a small hand telescope that allowed her to see Saturn's rings and Jupiter's satellites. From 1871 it was she who carried out the daily rainfall recording for the Royal Meteorological Society previously done for many years by her father. For a time she also recorded temperature, deep-well measurements, and thunderstorm activity. She was elected a fellow of the society in 1893, an honour few women had received and one she greatly prized. Beginning about 1881 a number of her meteorological notes appeared at intervals, often in Nature.

Shortly after the death of her father, whom she looked after in his last years, Brown began to take part publicly in astronomical work, and in 1883 presented a paper on sunspots to the then very active Liverpool Astronomical Society. Unlike the Royal Astronomical Society, this group accepted women members; Brown became director of its recently organized solar section, making observations herself and collecting and reporting data of others. Her own work was done in one of two observatories (the other housed meteorological instruments) built at Further Barton. She made two long, somewhat arduous, expeditions, with the charge of presenting reports to the Liverpool Society, to observe solar eclipses. The first was to Russia (1887) and the second to Trinidad (1889). Only the latter was successful scientifically, but Brown wrote lively accounts of both. In Pursuit of a Shadow (1888) described her journey, with a woman friend, across northern Europe to Kineshma, some 200 miles north-east of Moscow, where she was a guest at the dacha ('a delightful, romantic house') of a Russian astronomer. Caught in the Tropics, describing her Trinidad trip, appeared in 1890.

Following the decline of the Liverpool society, Brown became very active in a move to organize a metropolitan-based amateur group, which became the British Astronomical Association (BAA). On its founding in 1890 she accepted the directorship of its solar section, thus becoming, ex officio, a member of council. From then on she was increasingly absorbed in the work her post entailed, although she also helped in other sections and occasionally made observations of the moon and of variable and coloured stars. Her chief interest remained the daily registering of sunspots-demanding work, requiring accuracy in observation and artistic skill. Her reports appeared in more than twenty papers in the BAA's Journal throughout the 1890s and in seven lengthy annual reports of the solar section (BAA Memoirs, 1891-9). The latter were major contributions, widely recognized; each included a detailed pictorial calendar of sunspots and faculae and a life history 'ledger' for each spot. They earned her a distinguished place among amateur astronomers of her time. Brown held memberships in the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Astronomical Society of France, and the Astronomical Society of Wales. Although proposed (1892) for fellowship in the Royal Astronomical Society (whose meetings she frequently attended) she was not elected.

Calm, gentle, and unassuming by nature, a member of the Society of Friends and a regular attender of meetings, Brown spent a quiet life in the country. She never married, and after the death of her father her only companion was her sister, Jemima. In general she avoided interruptions to her routine of observing, drawing, writing, and rainfall recording, but she had an active correspondence with astronomers and other friends in many countries. In addition to her eclipse expeditions (the third and last of which was to northern Norway in 1896), she went to the Montreal meeting of the British Association in 1884 and afterwards travelled in Canada and the United States. Shorter journeys took her to Scotland, Ireland, and Spain. She recorded landscapes and wild flowers, a special interest, in colour sketches, and described her experiences in vivid letters to her sister.

Never very robust, Brown died suddenly, of cardiac thrombosis, at Further Barton, her lifelong home, on 5 March 1899, after a week of bronchial illness and in the midst of preparing for a fourth eclipse expedition. She was interred in the Friends' meeting-house burial-ground, Cirencester. She left her astronomical observatory, its contents, and £1000 to the British Astronomical Association.

Mary R. S. Creese 

Sources  The Observatory, 22 (1899), 171-2 + Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 9 (1898-9), 214-15 + Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 26 (1900), 214-15 + The Times (16 March 1899) + Leopoldina, 35 (1899), 134-5 + Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard (11 March 1899) + ILN (25 March 1899) + The Friend, new ser., 39 (1899), 172 + Friends' Quarterly Examiner, 33 (1899), 383 + 'Dictionary of Quaker biography', RS Friends, Lond. [card index] + private information (2004) + d. cert. + K. Weitzenhoffer, 'A forgotten astronomer', Astronomy, 20 (1992), 13-14 + M. Creese, 'Elizabeth Brown (1830-1899), solar astronomer', Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 108 (1998), 193-7
Likenesses  F. M. Savory, photograph, RAS [see illus.] · Savory of Cirencester, photograph, repro. in ILN · photograph, repro. in Journal of the British Astronomical Association
Wealth at death  £37,007 6s. 4d.: resworn probate, Nov 1899, CGPLA Eng. & Wales




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