Name | Simms, Frederick Walter |
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Place of work | Greenwich | ||
Employment dates |
1830 – 21 Oct 1835 |
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Posts | 1830 |
Extra Assistant |
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Born | 1803, Dec 24 |
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Died | 1865, Feb 27 |
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Family connections | Brother of William Simms (1793–1860) who made instruments for the Observatory with his partner Edward Troughton |
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Frederick Walter Simms by Maull & Polyblank. Albumen print, arched top, 1855. Simms is the only one of Pond’s assistants of whom there is a known portrait. © National Portrait Gallery, London. Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence (see below)
At the start of October 1835, Airy arrived as the new Astronomer Royal. A condition of him accepting the post was that the First Assistant Thomas Taylor should be removed from office. According to Airy, (writing in his autobiography), Simms ‘apparently had hoped for the office of First Assistant, for which he was quite incompetent’. Simms resigned soon after on 21 October. He was replaced by James Glaisher, Airy’s former Assistant at the Cambridge University Observatory, who interestingly had also been previously employed on the Trigonometrical Survey of Ireland. Following his departure, Simms developed a new career as a railway surveyor and engineer and published more books on surveying and tunnelling. He also produced the 1838 Map of The Parish of Greenwich in the County of Kent, for the Tithe Commissioners.
The following image is © National Portrait Gallery, London and is reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence.
Frederick Walter Simms by Maull & Polyblank. Albumen print, arched top, 1855. National Portrait Gallery Object ID: NPG P120(8)
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Except where indicated, all text and images are the copyright of Graham Dolan