Henry Kater

Henry Kater (April 16, 1777 – April 26, 1835), English physicist of German descent, was born at Bristol.

At first he purposed to study law; but this he abandoned on his father's death in 1794, and entered the army, obtaining a commission in the 12th regiment of foot, then stationed in India, where he rendered valuable assistance to William Lambton in the Great Trigonometric Survey. Failing health obliged him to return to England; and in 1808, being then a lieutenant, he entered on a distinguished student career in the senior department of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. Shortly after he was promoted to the rank of captain. In 1814 he retired on half-pay, and devoted the remainder of his life to scientific research.

His first important contribution to scientific knowledge was the comparison of the merits of the Cassegrainian and Gregorian telescopes, determining the latter to be an inferior design.

His most valuable work was the invention of Kater's pendulum, enabling the strength of gravity to be determined, first at London and subsequently at various stations throughout the country.

As the inventor of the floating collimator, Kater rendered a great service to practical astronomy ("Phil. Trans.", 1825, 1828). He also published memoirs (Phil. Trans., 1821, 1831) on British standards of length and mass; and in 1832 he published an account of his labours in verifying the Russian standards of length. For his services to Russia in this respect he received in 1814 the decoration of the order of St. Anne; and the same year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

He won the Copley Medal in 1817 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831.

His attention was also turned to the subject of compass needles, his Bakerian lecture "On the Best Kind of Steel and Form for a Compass Needle" (Phil. Trans., 1821) containing the results of many experiments. The treatise on "Mechanics" in Lardner's "Cyclopaedia" was partly written by him; and his interest in more purely astronomical questions was evidenced by two communications to the Astronomical Society's "Memoirs" for 1831–1833 — the one on an observation of Saturn's outer ring, the other on a method of determining longitude by means of lunar eclipses.

References

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External links

* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0002//0000019.000.html Awarding of RAS gold medal]
* [http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/macleay/kater1.htm Biographical information]

Obituaries

* [http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/MNRAS/0003//0000155.000.html MNRAS 3 (1836) 155]