James Gall

James Gall (1808 - 1895) was a Scottish clergyman who founded the Carrubbers Close Mission. As well as writing on religious matters, often from a rather unorthodox standpoint, he had an interest in astronomy. It was his "Easy Guide to the Constellations" and his "People's Atlas of the Stars" that brought him to people's attention.

Religious views

Most of Gall's work on religion was detailed is a book called "The Stars and the Angels" in which he not only argues for the existence of other inhabited planets but describes the view that Gabriel would have had on his way from heaven to earth to tell Mary that she would have a baby next Christmas.

A rare, but important, work by Gall, "The Synagogue Not the Temple, the Germ and Model of the Christian Church," 1890, is a must read for anyone who is seeking to understand the foundation upon which the Christian Church is modeled after.

Astronomy

Gall's main work as an astronomer was with the constellations. As part of this work he developed the Gall orthographic projection, a derivative of the Lambert Cylindrical Equal-Area, to project the celestial sphere onto flat paper in a manner that avoided distorting the shapes of the constellations. He also applied this technique to terrestrial mapmaking as a way to make a flat map of the round Earth. It was re-invented by Arno Peters in 1967 and adopted bysuch organisations as UNESCO.

References

* [http://www.astronomyedinburgh.org/publications/journals/43/publishing.html Astronomical Publishing in Edinburgh in the 19th Century] (implies he founded "Carrubbers Close Mission" after 1874)
* [http://www.carrubbers.org/about/history/ Carrubbers Close Mission History] at carrubbers.org (does not mention James Gall and states founded in 1858)