Up for auction "Scottish Astronomer" William Marshall Smart Signed First Day Cover Dated 1948.
ES-1894
Prof William Marshall Smart FRSE PRAS LLD
RIN (9
March 1889, Doune, Perthshire – 17 September 1975, Lancaster) was a 20th
century Scottish astronomer. He was born in Doune in Stirlingshire the son of Peter Fernie Smart and his wife,
Isabella Marshall Harrower. He was educated at the McLaren High School,
in Callander, and graduated MA from Glasgow University in
1910 in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. He went on to graduate with a
triple first in the Mathematical Triposes at Trinity College, Cambridge,
where he won the Tyson Medal for Astronomy. He
served in the Royal Navy during World War I as an instructor in navigation (RN College Greenwich 1915, HMS Emperor of India 1916–19)
and then returned to Cambridge University in
1919 as a lecturer in Mathematics and John Couch Adams Astronomer (1921–1937).
With Commander FN Shearme, he wrote the Admiralty Manual of Navigation (1922).
From 1937 to 1959 he was Regius Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow University. The
first edition of his Text-Book on Spherical Astronomy (later
co-authored) appeared in 1931. During World War II, Smart published four volumes on sea and air
navigation that became training manuals in the armed forces. His output was
impressive, writing more than twenty academic books during his career, and he
was recognised as a leader in his field. In 1943 he was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
His proposers were Edward Hindle, William Michael Herbert
Greaves, Edwin Arthur
Baker and James Pickering Kendall.
He served as the Society's Vice President from 1952 to 1955. In
1944 he moved to the university property: 2 The Square in Glasgow, previously
the house of Prof Duncan
M. Blair. He
was President of the Royal Astronomical Society from
1949 to 1951, and was a member of the Royal Institute of
Navigation.
He
was awarded the Lorimer Medal of the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh in 1958.