Brian Warner (astronomer)

Brian Warner

Hon. FRSSAf
Brian Warner; Hon. FRSSAf
Born	25 May 1939; Crawley Down, Sussex, England
Died	5 May 2023 (aged 83); South Africa
Alma mater	University College London ( BSc, PhD); University of London (DSc); University of Oxford (DSc);
Awards	John F.W. Herschel Medal (1988); Gill Medal (1992); Science-for-Society Gold Medal (2004);
	Scientific career
Fields	Astronomy ; History of astronomy ;
Institutions	University College London ; Balliol College, Oxford ; University of Texas at Austin ; University of Cape Town ;
Thesis	Abundances in Late-Type Stars (1964)
Doctoral advisor	Roy Henry Garstang
Doctoral students	Ed Nather ; Tim Hawarden ;

Last updated November 08, 2023

Brian Warner (25 May 1939 – 5 May 2023) Hon. FRSSAf was a British South African optical astronomer who was Emeritus Distinguished Professor of natural philosophy at the University of Cape Town. Warner's research included cataclysmic variable stars, pulsars, degenerate stars and binary stars. He also researched and published on the history of astronomy in South Africa.

Biography

Early life and education

Warner was born 25 May 1939 in Crawley Down, Sussex, England. His father was a gardener on a country estate and his mother was a charwoman.^[1] He didn't pass his eleven-plus exam, failing in mathematics, but was nonetheless admitted to the East Grinstead County Grammar School on the recommendation of his teacher.^[1] As a schoolboy he befriended the noted amateur astronomer Patrick Moore who lived nearby in East Grinstead where Warner and his friends would use Moore's telescope.^[1]^[2]

Warner went to University College London (UCL) in 1958 to study undergraduate astronomy.^[1] As a student, he was able to use the University of London Observatory. His first two papers were published in 1960, shortly before he graduated. The first in the Journal of the British Astronomical Association on rilles near the lunar crater Pluto, the second in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on the emission spectra of Venus.^[1]^[3]^[4] Warner remained at UCL for postgraduate studies, completing a PhD in astronomical spectroscopy in 1964 titled Abundances in Late type Stars. His doctoral supervisor was Roy Henry Garstang.^[1]^[5] For his thesis research he travelled to the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria, South Africa, to use the observatory's 1.9 m (6.2 ft) telescope.^[1]

Career

Warner became a postdoctoral researcher at UCL, before being awarded a Radcliffe-Henry Skynner Fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford, though the university didn't have its own observatory.^[1] In 1967 he was recruited to the University of Texas at Austin for his experience in spectroscopy.^[6]^[1] He also worked with his colleagues Ed Nather and David Evans in developing the new field of high-speed photometry for studying variable stars and measuring stellar radii by observing lunar occultations.^[7]^[8]^[6] In 1972 he was recruited as the first professor of astronomy at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and as head of the astronomy department. Nather also moved to UCT to undertake a PhD, with Warner as his doctoral supervisor.^[1]^[9]^[6] From 1981 to 1983, he served as president of the Royal Society of South Africa.^[10] Warner was head of the astronomy department until 1999, before formally retiring in 2004 though he continued to undertake research.^[1]^[9]

Warner died 5 May 2023 aged 83.^[11]

Awards and honours

McIntyre Award (1983) of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa ^[12]
The John F.W. Herschel Medal (1988) of the Royal Society of South Africa ^[13]
South Africa Medal (1989) of the Southern African Association for the Advancement of Science ^[14]
Gill Medal (1992) of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa^[6]
Honorary fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (1994)^[15]
Honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand (1995)^[16]
Science-for-Society Gold Medal (2004) of the Academy of Science of South Africa ^[17]^[18]
Honorary fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa (2008)^[19]^[20]
Honorary doctorate from the University of Cape Town (2009)^[21]
Honorary fellow of University College London (2009)^[22]
Fellow of The World Academy of Sciences (2009)^[23]

Books

Authored

Warner, Brian (1979). Astronomers at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema. ISBN 978-0-86961-109-8.
Warner, Brian (1983). Charles Piazzi Smyth, Astronomer Artist: His Cape Years 1835–1845. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema. ISBN 0-86961-133-X.
Warner, Brian; Warner, Nancy (1984). Maclear and Herschel: Letters and Diaries at the Cape of Good Hope, 1834–1938. Cape Town: A. A. Balkema. ISBN 0-86961-145-3.
Warner, Brian (1988). High Speed Astronomical Photometry. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-35150-8.
Warner, Brian (1995). Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, 1820–1831: The Founding of a Colonial Observatory. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. ISBN 0-7923-3527-9.
Warner, Brian (1996). Cataclysmic Variable Stars. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-511-58649-3.
Warner, Brian (1996). Dinosaurs' End: Scientific Poems. Cape Town: Firfield Pamphlet Press. ISBN 1-875058-06-0.
Warner, Brian; Rourke, John (1998). Flora Herscheliana: Sir John and Lady Herschel at the Cape 1834 to 1838. Houghton: Brenthurst Press. ISBN 0-909079-55-2.
Warner, Brian (2006). Cape Landscapes: Sir John Herschel's Sketches 1834–1838. University of Cape Town Press. ISBN 1-919713-75-1.
Warner, Brian (2007). Scatological Verse. Illustrated by Tony Grogan. Plumstead: Snailpress. ISBN 978-0-620-38273-1.

Edited

Franklin, Jane (1985). Warner, Brian; Warner, Nancy (eds.). The Journal of Lady Jane Franklin at the Cape of Good Hope, November 1836. Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library. ISBN 0-620-08355-7.
Mann, William (1989). Warner, Brian (ed.). The Cape Diary and Letters of William Mann, Astronomer and Mountaineer: 1839–1843. Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library. ISBN 0-86968-093-5.
Herschel, Margaret Brodie Stewart (1991). Warner, Brian (ed.). Lady Herschel: Letters from the Cape, 1834-1838. Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library. ISBN 0-86968-098-6.
Warner, Brian, ed. (1992). Variable Stars and Galaxies. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific. ISBN 0-937707-49-X.
Warner, Brian, ed. (1992). John Herschel 1792–1992: Bicentennial Symposium. Royal Society of South Africa. ISBN 0-9583958-1-0.
Westra, Pieter E.; Warner, Brian, eds. (1993). Festschrift in honour of Frank R. Bradlow. Cape Town: Friends of the South African Library. ISBN 0-86968-109-5.
Buckley, D. A. H.; Warner, Brian, eds. (1995). Cape Workshop on Magnetic Cataclysmic Variables. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific. ISBN 1-886733-06-6.
Warner, Brian (1995). Astronomy in South Africa. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille</span> French astronomer and geodesist

Abbé Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, formerly sometimes spelled de la Caille, was a French astronomer and geodesist who named 14 out of the 88 constellations. From 1750 to 1754, he studied the sky at the Cape of Good Hope in present-day South Africa. Lacaille observed over 10,000 stars using just a half-inch refracting telescope.

Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.

Caroline Lucretia Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, whose most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, which bears her name. She was the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, with whom she worked throughout her career.

William Lassell was an English merchant and astronomer. He is remembered for his improvements to the reflecting telescope and his ensuing discoveries of four planetary satellites.

Sir David Gill was a Scottish astronomer who is known for measuring astronomical distances, for astrophotography and geodesy. He spent much of his career in South Africa.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert T. A. Innes</span> South African astronomer

Robert Thorburn Ayton Innes FRSE FRAS was a British-born South African astronomer best known for discovering Proxima Centauri in 1915, and numerous binary stars. He was also the first astronomer to have seen the Great January Comet of 1910, on 12 January. He was the founding director of a meteorological observatory in Johannesburg, which was later converted to an astronomical observatory and renamed to Union Observatory. He was the first Union Astronomer. Innes House, designed by Herbert Baker, built as his residence at the observatory, today houses the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers.

Sir Harold Spencer Jones KBE FRS FRSE PRAS was an English astronomer. He became renowned as an authority on positional astronomy and served as the tenth Astronomer Royal for 23 years. Although born "Jones", his surname became "Spencer Jones".

Manuel John Johnson, FRS was a British astronomer.

William Stephen FinsenFRAS was a South African astronomer. He discovered a number of double stars and took many photographs of Mars. He developed the Finsen eyepiece interferometer to measure very close double stars. He was the final director of Union Observatory in South Africa from 1957 to 1965.

Union Observatory also known as Johannesburg Observatory (078) is a defunct astronomical observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa that was operated between 1903 and 1971. It is located on Observatory Ridge, the city's highest point at 1,808 metres altitude in the suburb Observatory.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Stewart Herschel</span> British astronomer

Alexander Stewart Herschel, DCL, FRS was a British astronomer.

Alan William James Cousins FRAS was a South African astronomer. His career spanned 70 years during which time he concentrated on the measurement of variable stars, including the measurement of the two sinusoidal periods of Gamma Doradus. The UBV photometric system for measuring stellar fluxes he devised in his 1990s became a standard known as the "Cousins system".

South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is the national centre for optical and infrared astronomy in South Africa. It was established in 1972. The observatory is run by the National Research Foundation of South Africa. The facility's function is to conduct research in astronomy and astrophysics. The primary telescopes are located in Sutherland, which is 370 kilometres (230 mi) from Observatory, Cape Town, where the headquarters is located.

Sir Thomas Maclear was an Irish-born South African astronomer who became Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Nather</span> American astronomer

Roy Edward Nather was an American astronomer, who at the time of his death, was professor emeritus in Astronomy at University of Texas at Austin. He pioneered the fields of asteroseismology of white dwarfs, and observational studies of interacting binary collapsed stars.

David Stanley Evans was a British astronomer, noted for his use of lunar occultations to measure stellar angular diameters during the 1950s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fearon Fallows</span> English astronomer

Fearon Fallows was an English astronomer.

Michael William Feast was a British-South African astronomer. He served as Director of the South African Astronomical Observatory from 1976–1992, then became a professor at the University of Cape Town.

Ian Stewart Glass is an infrared astronomer and scientific historian living in Cape Town, South Africa.

The Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, is a former scientific institution in South Africa. Founded by the British Board of Longitude in 1820, its main building is now the headquarters building of the South African Astronomical Observatory.

References

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "Brian Warner" (PDF). Legends of South African Science. Pretoria: Academy of Science of South Africa. 2017. pp. 220–223. doi: 10.17159/assaf.2016/0012 . hdl:20.500.11911/74. ISBN 978-0-9947076-7-3. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 October 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ Barker, Dennis (9 December 2012). "Sir Patrick Moore obituary". The Guardian . London. ISSN 1756-3224. Archived from the original on 29 December 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ Warner, B. (1960). "Rilles near the Lunar Crater Plato". Journal of the British Astronomical Association . 70: 299–300.
↑ Warner, B. (3 September 1960). "The Emission Spectrum of the Night Side of Venus". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 121 (3): 279–283. doi: 10.1093/mnras/121.3.279 .
↑ Warner, Brian (1964). Abundances in Late-Type Stars (PhD thesis). University College London.
1 2 3 4 "Award of Gill Medal to Brian Warner". Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa . 51: 106. 1 January 1992. Bibcode: 1992MNSSA..51..106. . ISSN 0024-8266. Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023– via Astrophysics Data System.
↑ Warner, Brian (1988). High Speed Astronomical Photometry. Internet Archive. Cambridge University Press. pp. 45–46. ISBN 978-0-521-35150-8.
↑ Winget, Don E.; Bash, Frank; Robinson, Edward L. (31 January 2018). "R. Edward Nather (1926–2014)". Bulletin of the AAS . American Astronomical Society. 50 (1). Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
1 2 Glass, I. S. (April 2020). "News Note : Brian Warner at 80" (PDF). Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa . 79 (1–4): 5–7. Bibcode:2020MNSSA..80....5G. hdl:10520/EJC-1dd2d2192b. ISSN 0024-8266. Archived (PDF) from the original on 29 January 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023– via Sabinet.
↑ Carruthers, Jane (2008). "Scientists in society: The Royal Society of South Africa". Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa . 63 (1): 24. Bibcode:2008TRSSA..63....1C. doi:10.1080/00359190809519207. S2CID 82514574. Archived from the original on 17 June 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023– via Taylor & Francis.
↑ "In Remembrance: Brian Warner". University of Cape Town . Archived from the original on 19 May 2023. Retrieved 15 June 2023.
↑ "McIntyre Award Winner 1983 (B Warner)". Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa . 42 (5–8): 17. August 1983. Bibcode: 1983MNSSA..42...17. . ISSN 0024-8266. Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "Awardees". Royal Society of South Africa . Archived from the original on 26 December 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "List of award winners: South Africa Medal (Gold)". Southern Africa Association for the Advancement of Science . Archived from the original on 8 February 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "Warner Honoured". Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa . 53: 42. 1 January 1994. Bibcode: 1994MNSSA..53Q..42. . ISSN 0024-8266. Archived from the original on 26 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023– via Astrophysics Data System.
↑ "RASNZ Honors Warner". Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa . 54 (11&12): 106. 1995. Bibcode: 1995MNSSA..54S.106. . ISSN 0024-8266. Archived from the original on 26 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023– via Astrophysics Data System.
↑ "ASSAf Science-for-Society Gold Medals – ASSAf". Archived from the original on 25 February 2023. Retrieved 25 February 2023.
↑ "In Brief". Physics Today . 58 (2): 82. 1 February 2005. Bibcode:2005PhT....58b..81.. doi:10.1063/1.2405562. ISSN 0031-9228. Archived from the original on 26 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "Current Fellows". Royal Society of South Africa . Archived from the original on 26 December 2022. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "Honorary Fellowships for Ellis, Warner" (PDF). Monday Paper. Vol. 27, no. 6. University of Cape Town. 28 April 2008. p. 4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "Stellar academics Ellis and Warner receive high honours" (PDF). Monday Paper. Vol. 28, no. 20. University of Cape Town. 14 December 2009. p. 2. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "List of Honorary Fellows". University College London . 22 September 2022. Archived from the original on 1 January 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.
↑ "Warner, Brian". The World Academy of Sciences . Archived from the original on 26 February 2023. Retrieved 26 February 2023.

Authority control databases
International	ISNI VIAF
National	France BnF data Germany Israel United States Netherlands
Academics	CiNii Scopus
People	Trove