Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A GREAT BRITISH GEODESIST ALEXANDER Ross CLARKE (1828–1914)

1943; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 7; Issue: 49 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1179/003962643791284853

1752-2706

C. F. Arden-Close,

Geographic Information Systems Studies

That man is to be envied who can devote many of the best years of his life to the study of a special branch of science and make some advances in it. Such a man will usually receive recognition of the value of his labours from his fellows in the world of science, and this was certainly the case with Colonel Clarke. The excellence of his many years' work on geodetical subjects, such as thereduction of observations, formulre for the spheroid, figures of the earth, standards of length, and similar matters, was fully appreciated by scientific men during his lifetime, in this country as well as abroad. Curiously enough, his name does not appear in the “Dictionary of National Biography”, though he is, perhaps, the best known of British geodesists. A paragraph is devoted to him in recent issues of the “Encyclopredia Britannica”, but this paragraph is, in one respect, inaccurate. One may say that geodesy makes little appeal to the ordinary citizen, who usually would not know what it is all about.