Portal:Ireland/Selected biography archive/3



William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse KP (June 17, 1800 – October 31, 1867) was born in Monkstown, County Cork and was an Irish astronomer. He was the sixteenth Chancellor of Trinity College, Dublin between 1862 and 1867. He became the third Earl of Rosse when his father died in 1841. Prior to this, his title was "Lord Oxmantown".

In the 1840s, he built his "Leviathan of Parsonstown" 72-inch (183-cm) telescope at Birr, Ireland (then called "Parsonstown") in County Offaly, which was for many decades the largest telescope in the world. He had to invent many of the techniques he used in constructing this telescope, both because its size was without precedent and because earlier telescope builders had guarded their secrets or had simply failed to publish their methods. Rosse's telescope was considered a marvelous technical and architectural achievement, and images of it were circulated widely within the British commonwealth. Building of the telescope had to be suspended during the Great Irish Famine, but in 1847 it was put into service. Read more...