Charles Piazzi Smyth was born in Naples on 3 January 1819. His parents were English. His father, William Henry Smyth, later an admiral in the Royal Navy, had an interest in astronomy, and named his son after the distinguished Italian mathematician and astronomer, Giuseppe Piazzi, who became the child’s godfather.
Piazzi Smyth was educated in Bedford, England where he was introduced to astronomy in his father’s observatory, and his first job as a young man was at the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.
Following the same path as his predecessor, Thomas Henderson, Piazzi Smyth became the second Astronomer Royal for Scotland in 1846, at the Calton Hill Observatory, and Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.
While continuing the observations of his predecessor, he installed the time ball on the top of the Nelson Monument in 1853 for the benefit of the ships in the harbour of Leith, which from 1861 was accompanied by the One O’Clock Gun.
Piazzi Smyth enjoyed a long and interesting career, including a notable expedition to Tenerife where he demonstrated the value of making observations at high altitudes, while he became increasingly aware of the poor observing conditions in Edinburgh.
Piazzi Smyth had a special interest in the pyramids of Egypt, particularly the Great Pyramid which he visited, measured and interpreted in the light of his reading of the bible, leading him to speculative theories, eventually disproved to his great disappointment by archaeologists.
He eventually resigned in 1888 in protest at underfunding and the poor condition of his equipment on Calton Hill and retired to Ripon in Yorkshire, where he died on 21 February 1900. He is buried in Sharow churchyard, where his tomb is appropriately in the form of a pyramid surmounted by a cross. His other memorial is a crater on the moon in his name.
There is an exhibition on Piazzi Smyth in the Nelson Monument.
See also, the article in Wikipedia. (Painting: John Faed, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)