Astronomer, born at Chelsea, 23rd March 1837, graduated from St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1860. Devoting himself from 1863 to astronomy, in 1866 he was elected F.R.A.S., and in 1873 made a lecturing tour in America. About this time he communicated to the R. A. S. some important papers on “The Milky Way,” “The Transit of Venus,” “Star Distribution,” &c.; and his name is associated with the determination of the rotation of Mars, the theory of the solar corona, and stellar distribution. He charted the 324,198 stars contained in Argelander’s great catalogue. His magazine Knowledge was founded in 1881, in which year he settled in the States; and he died at New York, 12th Sept. 1888.

Personal

  Personally, Proctor was a lovable man, endeared to his friends by a transparent simplicity of life and manners. His very faults were the faults of a noble nature. His pugnacity proceeded from a strong sense of justice and an earnest love of right; his frank self-assertion from a modest consciousness of his own true worth and the ridiculous disparity of native endowment between himself and his critics.

  Proctor mixed very little in what is called “society;” he belonged to no club; it is surprising how few of his eminent contemporaries he knew personally. His delight was in his work, his appetite for knowledge was omnivorous, and he was happy in the companionship of wife and children, and of a chosen friend or two with whom to wind up the day over a rubber. He was a good oarsman, an excellent fencer, a doughty champion at chess; last, and not least he loved a romp with the children. It was within the social circle—narrow only in number—that the lovableness and simplicity of his character came out; he who, because he hated shams and quacks, of whatever profession, and all their works, was regarded by many outsiders as a querulous and agressive man, “never at peace unless he was fighting,” was seen to be full of kindly considerateness and deference to men of smaller calibre and narrower culture; willing to learn of them, and fretfully anxious if he thought he had said anything that might hurt or vex them…. Proctor, let me add, was a man of deep religious feeling, looking with no glib complacency upon, or ready with cut-and-dried panaceas for, the sin and sorrow of the world. As with Epicurus, his quarrel was not with the gods, but with men’s theories about them.

  In a series of papers communicated to the Royal Astronomical Society, he examined into the conditions of observation for the transits of 1874 and 1882 with great thoroughness and at much detail, and his opinions may be read in “Old and New Astronomy.”… One of Mr. Proctor’s greatest undertakings was the charting of the three hundred and twenty-four thousand stars contained in Argelander’s Catalogue, showing the relation of stars down to the eleventh magnitude, with the Milky Way and its subsidiary branches. In a series of papers on “Star Distribution,” “The Construction of the Milky Way,” “The Distribution of Nebulæ and Star Clusters,” and on “The Proper Motions of the Stars,” etc., he completely disposed of the artificial theories which had been previously held regarding the Stellar universe…. Amid all this scientific activity Mr. Proctor found time for the lighter accomplishments. He was passionately fond of music, and played the piano with much delicacy of touch and feeling. He was an authority on whist, and was the author of a book on the subject; and he was at one time president of the British Chess Society in London.

  In 1884, at the close of a long lecture season in the United States, he purchased a home in St. Joseph, Missouri, and a winter residence at Lake Lawn, Florida. In social life Mr. Proctor was a genial, entertaining companion and a firm friend. As a conversationalist he had exceptional gifts. On the eighth of September, 1888, Mr. Proctor left his winter home, intending to sail for Europe a week later. In New York he was taken violently ill, and two days after his arrival died of yellow fever in one of the hospitals of that city.

  His success on the lecture platform was from the first assured, and greatly increased his popularity…. His papers on the coming “Transit of Venus,” in the same journal [“Knowledge”], involved him in an acrimonious controversy with the astronomer royal, Sir George Airy, as to the time and place for observing the transit. Proctor’s views ultimately prevailed. Among his many gifts that of lucid exposition was the chief, and his main work was that of popularising science as a writer and lecturer. Yet he was no mere exponent. The highest value attaches to his researches into the rotation period of Mars, and to his demonstration of the existence of a resisting medium in the sun’s surroundings by its effect on the trajectory of the prominences. His grasp of higher mathematics was proved by his treatise on the Cycloid, and his ability as a celestial draughtsman by his charting 324,198 stars from Argelander’s “Survey of the Northern Heavens” on an equal surface projection. Many of his works were illustrated with maps drawn by himself with admirable clearness and accuracy. Versatile as profound, he wrote in “Knowledge” on miscellaneous subjects under several pseudonyms, and was a proficient in chess, whist, and on the pianoforte.

General

  As an Astronomer and Mathematician he stands in the front rank of scientists, and to the most assiduous application and untiring industry he adds a brilliancy of imagination, lucidity of style, and a daring originality of purpose that give him a distinct and honorable place among the select and illustrious few who have widened the boundaries of exact knowledge, and devoted great intellectual power to the elucidation of some of the grandest themes in the arcana of the sciences.

  It has been a favourite charge against him by a few ignorant and self-interested people, that he was simply a wonderfully clever expositor of other men’s ideas and discoveries. This charge, I have noted, being made by men whose entire books are the merest paste-and-scissors compilations from the works of their predecessors, and whose worn illustrative woodcuts have done duty in text-books over and over and over again. Never was there a greater mistake, or (when deliberately uttered) a greater falsehood. Admitting that Proctor was unrivalled as a popular expositor of the most abstruse discoveries of others; he was very much more than this. He was a born mathematician, and most fertile in expedients, geometrical and analytical, in the solution of problems. I have spoken previously of his “Geometry and Cycloids,” and the first edition of his “Moon,” and may further advert to his papers scattered through the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, as indicative of his capacity for dealing with mathematical questions in an original manner. He applied the differential calculus to the solution of the most ludicrously diverse questions. He devoted great attention to cartography, and many of his maps, both celestial and terrestrial, are unsurpassed for their legibility, convenience, accuracy, and adaptability to the purposes for which they were designed. No existing maps of the stars visible to the naked eye can compare for efficiency with those in his “Larger Star Atlas,” with its ingenious projection of his own devising, whereby distortion is sensibly eliminated; while among his latest works his large charts for great circle sailing, and his maps of the world on the equidistant projection, are conspicuous for their beauty and accuracy.

  In 1881 he founded “Knowledge,” a weekly scientific journal, but changed it to a monthly in 1885, and continued its editor until his death. His productiveness and versatility were remarkable. In the same issue of his journal he would appear in several rôles at once: as the editor and as Richard A. Proctor, writing on astronomy and mathematics; as Thomas Foster, criticising and carrying to its logical conclusions Dickens’ unfinished novel of “Edwin Drood;” and then anonymously criticising and refuting the said Thomas Foster; as the whist editor and the chess editor and every other sort of editor demanded by the occasion. At the same time he was writing articles for other periodicals and newspapers, and he wrote well on every subject he handled.

  I will not speak here of his astronomical work. Astronomers of a certain dry-as-dust school have long been in the habit of gauging that by their own measure. But those who knew him knew that for width of grasp and breadth of vision Proctor had few equals among modern thinkers. What he saw he saw with a philosophical clearness and a cosmical profundity only to be found within a very small and select circle. He could be properly judged by his peers alone. That his performance unhappily somehow fell short of his natural powers was due to the fact that the necessity for earning a living by the work of his brains compelled him to waste upon popularizing results and upon magazine articles a genius capable of the highest efforts. For myself, I do not remember to have met among contemporaries three other men who so impressed me with a consciousness of intellectual greatness.

  No writer of this generation has done more to interest people in the high science of astronomy than the man whose name appears at the head of this article. Both by original investigation and by numerous popular treatises on the subject, Professor Proctor strove to promote a knowledge of astronomy…. His first book was on “Saturn and its System,” and was published in 1865, at his own expense; its preparation occupied four years. It was very favorably received by astronomers, who recognized that a writer of exceptional ability had appeared. Geometrical conceptions were expounded with great clearness, and astronomical and historical details were explained with an ease and enthusiasm which attracted the reader. But though the book was well received by the reviewers, the public did not buy it, and he found, to his great disappointment, that its publication was a source of loss instead of profit…. Professor Proctor was the author of fifty-seven volumes on astronomy, the most popular of which is perhaps “Other Worlds than Ours.” His last work, however, is his most important and complete production. It is entitled “Old and New Astronomy,” and has been finished and published since his death by his friend Mr. Arthur C. Ranyard of England.

  At a time when men of affairs as well as men of science turn with increasing interest to the subject of Astronomy, no small importance attaches to the character and work of the man of whom Professor Young could say, “As an expounder and popularizer of science he stands, I think, unrivaled in English literature.”… The first work which Mr. Proctor published was a paper on “The Colors of Double Stars,” which appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, in 1863, and for which the author received fifty dollars. This short paper of nine pages represented six weeks’ labor, sometimes not more than four or five lines having been completed in a day. His first book, “Saturn and its System,” was favorably received by scientific men, but proved a financial burden at a time when he especially needed remuneration. The years which followed were full of varied activities. One of his greatest undertakings was the “Charting of 324,000 stars contained in Argelander’s Great Catalogue showing the relation of stars down to the 11th magnitude with the Milky Way and its subsidiary branches.”