Herbert Hall Turner

Born Aug. 13, 1861, in Leeds; died Aug. 20, 1930, in Stockholm. English astronomer. Fellow of the Royal Society of London (1896).

A graduate of Trinity College of Cambridge University, Turner was a staff member of the Royal Greenwich Observatory from 1884 to 1893. In 1893 he became a professor at Oxford University and the director of the university observatory. In 1896, Turner made the first use of a coelostat in equipment for observing the solar corona during an eclipse. He developed a technique, known as Turner’s method, for determining the exact position of stars from photographs and directed work at the Oxford University Observatory on the compilation of an astrographic catalog as part of the Carte du Ciel program. In 1913 he turned his efforts to the development of seismology. Turner wrote several popular books on astronomy.