RARE "Scottish Astronomer" William Smart Signed FDC Dated 1948 For Sale

Up for sale "Scottish Astronomer" William Marshall Smart Signed First Day Cover Dated 1948. 

ES-1894

Prof William Marshall 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.