Talk:Stephen Peter Rigaud

Life

Reference for article.

Rigaud, Stephen Peter (1774-1839), astronomer, was born on 12 August 1774 at Powell's Row (later Old Palace Terrace), Richmond, Surrey, the son (there was also a daughter) of Stephen Rigaud (d. 1814), observer at the King's Observatory, Kew, and his wife, Mary, daughter of Stephen Charles Triboudet Demainbray (1710-1782). Both families were of ancient French origins. Rigaud was educated at Mr Delafosse's school, Richmond, and in April 1791 he entered Exeter College, Oxford, where he made his first astronomical observations in 1793. In the following year (while still an undergraduate) he was elected a fellow; he graduated BA in 1797 and proceeded MA in 1799. At the age of forty Rigaud married, in June 1815, Christian, the eldest daughter of Gibbes W. Jordan, a barrister.

Rigaud tutored at Exeter College. From about 1805 he deputized for the ailing Thomas Hornsby, the Savilian professor of astronomy and reader in experimental philosophy, by giving his lectures. On Hornsby's death in 1810 Abram Robertson was elected to his chair; Rigaud replaced Robertson as Savilian professor of geometry and was also appointed reader in experimental philosophy. By this time Rigaud was already a distinguished scholar, a fellow of the Royal Society since 1805, and, since his father's death in 1814, joint observer with his grandfather at the King's Observatory at Kew. Therefore, when Robertson died in 1827 and the university transferred Rigaud from the Savilian chair of geometry to that of astronomy, the Radcliffe trustees accepted him without question as their observer. They made up his salary to £300, with free accommodation, and during the 1820s (when attendance averaged forty) the fees from his experimental philosophy lectures in the Ashmolean museum were substantial.

Within a year the honour of succeeding to the chair and observership was shattered. Rigaud's beloved young wife died, on 26 March 1827, leaving him with seven small children. Bereft, his black hair 'turned swiftly to grey' (Guest, 257). He immersed himself in the care and education of his children, and work. With one assistant, Angel Lockey, he supervised continuation of the meteorological observations commenced in 1816, and the regular meridian observations with the John Bird instruments of 1772-3. The latter work alone, if reduced for timely publication, would have been as much as two men could manage, and though Rigaud was a practical astronomer by training and tradition, his and Robertson's observations were 'overtaken by more accurate work' (Thackeray, 9) elsewhere and were never published. Notably, his books and all but one of his papers published outside Oxford were written after his arrival at the observatory. Meanwhile he was responsible for the observatory's first major new instrument, by Thomas Jones, transitional in design between a mural circle and a meridian circle, requested from the trustees. Rigaud oversaw its installation in 1836, tested it in 1837 and 1838, but died before he could bring it into use.

Rigaud had a passion and skill for scientific history, and after the loss of his wife became the foremost historian of astronomy and mathematics in his generation. He had a large library of his own, after 1834 supplemented annually by the trustees. His delight was to recover from oblivion the details of biography and invention, and the processes of discovery. Having rediscovered Bradley's original observations and correspondence, his first major work was an acclaimed edition of both (1831). Other publications on Newton's Principia, and on Thomas Harriot's observations, were considered important. Rigaud saw his projected life of Halley as 'a duty, to rescue his memory' (Rigaud, 11), but this massive effort was never completed. Those motives underlay his transcription of nearly a thousand pages of Letters of Scientific Men of the seventeenth century (1841, 2nd edn 1862).

A conservative in politics Rigaud served four monarchs, but he was independent and never self-seeking. He was a devout Anglican, and studied scripture. Of a sensitive and rather anxious nature, but amiable, modest, and renowned for his personal and scholarly integrity, Rigaud was a founder of the Ashmolean Society in Oxford. He published numerous papers on subjects as diverse as meteorology, Greek mathematics, steam engines, topography, and historical observations in its Proceedings, and twenty in the Journal of the Royal Institution, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, Journal of Science, Philosophical Magazine, and others. Sometime proctor and delegate to the university press, he was one of the first public examiners in 1801, 1806, and 1835 for the university's mathematics scholarship. Rigaud was one of the first to collect systematically scientific ephemera and prints, contemporary and historical, now mostly in the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford.

Rigaud was a member of the board of longitude criticized by Francis Baily in 1822 as containing learned professors who seldom attend (Dreyer, 57). Although domestic circumstances after 1827 partly explain his absence from the learned societies, arguably this deprived Oxford science of a potential motive force, although he served as vice-president of the Royal Society for 1837-8. But his real interests lay elsewhere. In 1839 Rigaud was still transcribing letters, working on the papers of Savery and Halley, and revising lectures. While staying with his friend, the clockmaker Benjamin Vulliamy, in Pall Mall, Rigaud was taken ill and after eighteen hours of intense suffering died on 16 March 1839, probably of a burst appendix. He was buried in St James's churchyard, Piccadilly.

After Rigaud's death the university appointed a mathematician without astronomical experience to the Savilian chair. The trustees declined to appoint him as their observer, preferring a young astronomer of their own choice, Manuel Johnson, to work their expensive new instrument. For the ensuing thirty-five years the professors had neither instruments nor observatory for research. From Exeter College, Rigaud's eldest son, Stephen Jordan Rigaud (1816-1859), became a headmaster, then, in 1857, bishop of Antigua. Rigaud's fourth son, John, became a fellow of Magdalen College until his death in 1888. Another son, Gibbes (d. 1885), rose to the rank of major-general.

Roger Hutchins

Sources Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society of London, 5 (1839-43), 22-4 + [J. Rigaud], Stephen Peter Rigaud M.A., FRS.: a memoir (1883) + I. Guest, Dr John Radcliffe and his trust (1991) + A. V. Simcock, The Ashmolean Museum and Oxford science, 1683-1983 (1984) + History of the Royal Astronomical Society, [1]: 1820-1920, ed. J. L. E. Dreyer and H. H. Turner (1923); repr. (1987) + R. J. Beevor, Inventory of Rigaud papers in the Bodleian Library (1905) + Foster, Alum. Oxon. + A. D. Thackeray, The Radcliffe Observatory, 1772-1972 (1972) + C. Knight, ed., The English cyclopaedia: biography, 3 (1856) + Ward, Men of the reign + DNB + A. A. Rambaut, 'Note on the unpublished observations made at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, between the years 1774 and 1838', Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 60 (1899-1900), 265-93 + GM, 1st ser., 85/1 (1815), 562 + GM, 1st ser., 97/1 (1827) Archives Bodl. Oxf., corresp. and MSS + Bodl. Oxf., MSS relating to Savilian Foundation + Oxf. U. Mus. NH, corresp. and MSS + Oxf. U. Mus. NH, observatory notebooks with Jones's circle, MS RAD 41 | BL, letters to P. Bliss, Add. MSS 34568-34572 + Man. CL, Manchester Archives and Local Studies, letters, mainly to W. R. Whatton + RS, corresp. with Sir John Herschel + Trinity Cam., corresp. with William Whewell Likenesses bust, Exeter College, Oxford · portrait, repro. in Guest, Dr. John Radcliffe and his Trust, facing p. 273 · silhouette, Exeter College, Oxford, MHS Oxf. [see illus.] · silhouette, Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.64.208.159 (talk) 13:22, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

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