Robert Holford Macdowall Bosanquet

Robert Holford Macdowall Bosanquet ( born July 31, 1841 in Rock Hall at Alnwick, Northumberland; † August 7, 1912 in Castello Zamorra, Tenerife ) was a British astronomer, and music theorist.

Bosanquet was the son of a pastor, attended Eton College and the University of Oxford ( Balliol College), where he received top grades in physics and mathematics. Although he initially suggested that a career in law in Lincoln 's Inn in London, but then usually taught as a tutor (sometimes as an examiner ) for natural sciences at Oxford, where he was a Fellow of St. John 's College later. Later he was a professor at the Royal College of Music. In 1890 he settled down for health reasons in Tenerife and returned only in the summer back to England. He never married and died at his home in Tenerife.

He published 1875-1890 numerous scientific articles mostly in the Philosophical Magazine. For example, he invented generalized keyboards for unusual sound systems and was a recognized authority on organ building. Two of his specially designed according to new principles home organs he left the South Kensington Museum, now they are at the Science Museum in South Kensington. One of the instruments has 48 keys per octave (after a sound system by Hermann von Helmholtz ), the other 84 He also dealt with electrodynamics, where he worked both theoretically and experimentally, and a novel polariscope invented. In astronomy, he published, for example, on orbit determination and Babylonian astronomy (in collaboration with Archibald Henry Sayce ).

In 1871 he became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1890 and the Royal Society.

He was the brother of Admiral Day Bosanquet and the philosopher Bernard Bosanquet.

Writings

• An Elementary Treatise on Musical Intervals and Temperament, London, Macmillan, 1876