Francis Beaufort ( 1774 - 1857 )

Birth: 1774 Death: 17 December 1857 Profession: Hydrographer Sailor Career: Entered the Navy (1787); studied astronomy and meteorology for five months under Rev Henry Ussher, first Andrews Professor of Astronomy, University of Dublin and first Director of Dunsink Observatory (1788); saw much active service; Commander (1800); worked on establishing a semaphore system capable of transmitting messages from Dublin to Galway in eight minutes with his future father-in-law Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1803);surveyed the entrance of the Rio de la Plata (1807); surveyed the coast of Karamania; Hydrographer to the Admiralty (1829-1855); awarded DCL Oxford (1839); Rear Admiral (1846); retired (1855); devised the Beaufort scale of wind strength and an alphabetical categorization of the weather's various states; Beaufort Sea, near the current Alaskan oil fields is named after him; Beaufort prize is awarded annually to the best student of navigation at the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth Honours: KCB 1848 Memberships: FRAS 1829; MRIA 1832 Membership: Fellow Election Date: 30/06/1814.