Gregory, Richard, Sir, 1864-1952

Professor of astronomy, Queens College, London.

From the description of Correspondence with Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, 1895-1945. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 122613927

Professor of Astronomy, Queens College, University of London, 1898-; Editor of "Nature," 1919-1939; Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, and Fellow of the Institute of Physics.

From the description of Papers. (Unknown). WorldCat record id: 81327972

Sir Richard Arman Gregory, 1st bt, FRS (1864-1952), was born in Bristol, the son of a cobbler. He became successively an apprentice in a boot and shoe factory (1879-82), assistant in the Clifton College physics laboratory (1882-84), a student at the Normal School of Science, South Kensington (1884-87), science demonstrator in HM Dockyard School, Portsmouth (1887), computor to the Solar Physics Committee and assistant to Sir Norman Lockyer (1889-92) as well as Oxford University extension lecturer (1890-95). From 1893 he was assistant editor, under Lockyer, of Nature (1893-1919), effectively its editor from at least 1907 and formally so for twenty years (1919-39), and scientific editor for the publishers Macmillans (1905-39). Gregory was the greatest scientific journalist of his day. He was also keenly interested in securing the proper place for science in the school curriculum, and wrote textbooks on astronomy, chemistry, education, hygiene, physics and other scientific subjects. After 1919 (when he was knighted) Gregory became more and more a public figure. With his boundless energy and curiosity and his optimism about new causes, he was a member of some seventy organizations and served as president of twenty-five. In particular he was the moving spirit of the British Science Guild until its merger with the British Association for the Advancement of Science - to which he also had a very close attachment, serving as president throughout the Second World War. He was created a baronet in 1931, and elected, for 'conspicuous services to the cause of science', a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1933. He died in 1952 at Middleton on Sea, West Sussex. See W. H. G. Armytage, Sir Richard Gregory: his life and work (London, Macmillan, 1957).

From the guide to the The Gregory Papers, c1870-1964, (University of Sussex Library)