Nevil Maskelyne ( 1732 - 1811 )

Birth: London, England (06 October 1732) Death: The Royal Observatory at Greenwich, London (09 February 1811) Profession: Clergyman, Church of England Research Field: Astronomy Education: Westminster School; St Catharine's College, Cambridge (matriculated 1750); Trinity College, Cambridge; BA (1745), MA (1757); BD (1768), DD (1777) Career: Fellow of Trinity (1756); sent by the Royal Society to observe the Transit of Venus from St Helena (1761); Astronomer Royal (1765, for 46 years); established the Nautical Almanac (1766); He and his assistants climb Perthshire's 'fairy mountain', Schiehallion, where using plumb lines and astronomical observations, they demonstrated the gravitational attraction of mountains as proposed by Isaac Newton almost a century before, and measured the degree of plumb line defection to calculate the Earth's mean density and mass.