2nd Quarter Biography (William Rutter Dawes)

            William Rutter Dawes was born in West Sussex, England in the year 1799.  His father, a mathematics teacher, hoped that William would become a clergyman in the Church of England.  William chose instead to train to be a doctor at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital.  He moved to Liverpool in 1826, where he met William Lassell.  Although there is no record of their first meeting, it is known that they struck up a lifelong friendship.  It was around this time that Dawes first became interested in astronomy, particularly the study of binary stars.  At one point, Dawes obtained a copy of Rees’s Encyclopedia, and copied Sir William Herschel’s catalogue of double stars out of it.  He then used a 1.6 inch refractor and a copy of Flamsteed’s Atlas to find all the binaries draw diagrams of them every “fine night”.

            Soon after moving to Liverpool, Dawes turned from medicine to religion, resulting in him taking charge of a small congregation in Ormskirk, 15 miles from Liverpool. Dawes took up astronomy and the study of binary stars in earnest in 1829.  Sir John Herschel eventually became Dawes’ friend and mentor.  Dawes improved on Sir John’s own binary star research by refining his telescope, a 3.8 inch Dolland refractor.  As a result, he was able to make observations that were so much more accurate that he eventually got the nickname “eagle eye Dawes”.

            Dawes was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1830.  Dawes had never been a healthy man, and the death of his wife in 1839 made his health worse than ever.  As a result, he gave up his congregation and moved to London, where he became an assistant at George Bishop’s private observatory, which had a 7 inch refracting telescope.  Dawes continued his astronomical work there until 1844.

            Dawes married again in 1842, and moved to Kent, living 40 miles from his friend Sir John Herschel.  Dawes’ new wife was wealthy, so he was able to build his own observatory and install a 6.5 inch Merz refractor.  With it, he “co-discovered” Staurn’s crepe ring.  W. C. Bond at the Harvard Observatory had also located the ring but the news hadn’t even crossed the Atlantic before Dawes made his claim.

            In 1857, Dawes moved to Haddenham in Buckinghamshire, where he stayed for the remainder of his life.  There, he gained great respect for the free medical service he gave to the poor of the town.  His second wife died in 1860, causing his own health to deteriorate even more.  He continued to observe the stars until 1865, which was also the year that he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.  He died 3 years later in 1868.