Author: Robinson, Thomas Romney
Biography:
ROBINSON, Thomas Romney (1792-1882: ancestry.com)
A child prodigy who became an eminent scientist, Robinson was baptised John Thomas Romney but always published as Thomas Romney or T. R. Robinson. His parents were Thomas Robinson, an English artist (and pupil of Romney) who had moved to Dublin, and his wife Ruth Buck. From Dublin the family went to Belfast, where T. R. attended the Belfast Academy. His first poems were published in the Gentleman's Magazine in 1801; his first collected volume (1806) had 1600 subscribers. He entered Trinity College Dublin when he was twelve, graduated BA in 1810 and MA in 1817, and stayed on as a lecturer in "natural philosophy" until after he married Eliza (or Elizabeth) Isabelle Rambaut in 1821. He took a BD in 1822 and accepted a college living in 1823. In Nov. 1823 he was also appointed astronomer at Armagh observatory, which he set about improving and making use of for astronomical research. He remained in that position for almost sixty years, wrote many scientific papers, received honorary degrees, and invented a simple cup anemometer that became a standard piece of equipment and was known as the Robinson anemometer. After the death of his first wife, with whom he had three children, in 1843 he married Lucy Jane Edgeworth, youngest daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. He died at the observatory in Armagh. (ODNB 3 Aug. 2020; ancestry.com 3 Aug. 2020)