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The Dunkin Project
Peter Hingley (RAS)
Edwin Dunkin ( 1821 - 1898) was born in Truro, the son of one
of the Computers of the 'Nautical Almanac' in the days when it
was compiled as a sort of 'cottage industry', quite substantially
done in Cornwall it might be said. When the Almanac was
reorganised under Airy the family moved to London and, by a
strange chain of events, Edwin entered the Greenwich Observatory
and rose to the giddy heights of Chief Assistant, under Christie.
He is probably best known today for his beautiful book 'The
Midnight Sky', which derived from a series of articles which
appear to have been the first ever published in a general magazine
with illustrations of the sky for each month (in 1869). He also
published a great number of articles on astronomical and other
scientific subjects. He left a manuscript Autobiography which by
another strange turn of events came to the RAS in 1970. The
Royal Institution of Cornwall, of which Dunkin is a former
President, has mounted an exhibition on Cornish Astronomers (of which we
have found five-and-a-half) to mark the Eclipse and is also
publishing an edition of the Autobiography under the title of 'A
Far-Off Vision'. It has been edited by P.D. Hingley, Librarian of the
RAS, and Miss Tamsin Daniel, Curator of Art and Exhibitions at the
Royal Cornwall Museum. It is hoped a copy will be available for
inspection, and order forms available, at the meeting.
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