John Allan Broun

John Allan Broun, FRS (21 September 1817, Dumfries, Scotland – 22 November 1879), was a Scottish magnetician and meteorologist who carried out his studies on magnetism in India. One of the fundamental discoveries he made was that the Earth loses or gains magnetic intensity not locally, but as a whole. He also found that solar activity causes magnetic disturbances.

Education and early career

Broun was educated at Edinburgh University and was later the director of the magnetic observatory at Makerstoun, in Scotland, from 1842 to 1849. This observatory had been founded by Sir Thomas Brisbane. The observations Broun made at Makerstoun were published in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Work in India

From 1852, Broun was director of Trivandrum Magnetic Observatory, in Trivandrum, in Travancore, India. Trivandrum is today known as Thiruvananthapuram, and is the capital of the Indian State of Kerala, but then it was the capital of the Indian Raj of Travancore, and part of the British Empire. The observatory had been founded in 1841 by Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma, the Maharaja of Tranvacore. The first director of the observatory was John Caldecott (1800-1849). The observatory, which still exists and is now part of the University of Kerala, is one of the oldest of its kind in modern India. The rulers of Tranvacore while Broun was there were Uthradom Thirunal (until 1860) and then Ayilyam Thirunal. Broun, while still in India, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1853. He also built an observatory on Agastya Mala, the highest peak in Travancore, and helped to found the museum and zoological gardens in Trivandrum. This museum was later demolished and replaced by what is now called Napier Museum. The original zoological gardens still survive as Trivandrum Zoo.

Later career

Braun left India in 1865, living in Lausanne, Switzerland, and then Stuttgart, Germany, before arriving in London, England, in 1873. He then, with a grant from the Royal Society, worked on analysing magnetic observations made at colonial stations. He also published reports on the Makerstoun and Trivandrum observatories. In 1878, he was awarded the Royal Society's Royal Medal for over 35 years of work on magnetism and meteorology.

ources

*Entry for John Allan Broun in Dictionary of National Biography (1903)
* [http://royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=(((text)='john')AND((text)='allan')AND((text)='broun')) Entry for Broun] in the Royal Society's Library and Archive catalogue's details of Fellows (accessed 22 April 2008)
* [http://www.keralauniversity.edu/centers.htm History of the University] , including the University Observatory, from the University of Kerala

External links

* [http://www.nls.uk/catalogues/online/cnmi/inventories/acc10064.pdf Manuscripts of John Allan Broun] , from the National Library of Scotland
* [http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P3713&tabType=ARCHIVE John Allan Broun entry] at the UK's National Archives
* [http://www.swathithirunal.in/rlinsti/musiume.htm History of Trivandrum Museum] , with three reports by Broun on the museum, the zoological park and the gardens at Trivandrum