James South

Who was James South?

Sir James South was a British astronomer.

He helped found the Astronomical Society of London, and it was under his name as president of the society from 1831 to 1832 that a petition was successfully submitted to obtain a royal charter in 1831, whereupon it became the Royal Astronomical Society.

South and John Herschel jointly produced a catalogue of 380 double stars in 1824, reobserving many of the double stars that had been discovered by William Herschel. South then continued and observed another 458 double stars over the following year.

He won the Copley Medal in 1826 and the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in that same year. He was knighted in 1831. Craters on Mars and the Moon are named in his honor.

Starting around 1826, James South made plans for a new, larger telescope, an equatorially mounted achromatic refractor in a new observatory. He bought a 12-inch aperture lens from Robert-Aglaé Cauchoix in Paris for about 1000 pounds, large enough to be the biggest achromatic object lens in the world at the time. The telescope for the lens was completed, but dismantled around 1838.