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Edward Sabine

Sir Edward Sabine (October 14, 1788 - May 26, 1883) was an English astronomer, scientist, ornithologist and explorer. He was born in Dublin and died at East Sheen in Surrey.

Sabine was educated at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and obtained a commission in the royal artillery at the age of fifteen. He attained the rank of major-general in 1859.

His only experience of warfare seems to have been at the siege of Fort Erie, Canada in 1814. In early life he devoted himself to astronomy and physical geography, and in consequence he was appointed astronomer to various expeditions, among others that of Sir John Ross (1818) in search of the Northwest Passage, and that of Sir William Edward Parry soon afterwards. For his work in the Arctic he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society in 1821.

Later, he spent long periods on the intertropical coasts of Africa and America, and again among the snows of Spitsbergen. He was a member of the Royal Commission of 1868-1869 for standardizing weights and measures. Sabine was for ten years (1861-1871) president of the Royal Society, and was knighted in 1869.

Of Sabine's scientific work two branches in particular deserve very high credit

While the majority of his researches bear on one or other of the subjects just mentioned, others deal with such widely different topics as the birds of Greenland (Sabine's Gull is named for him), ocean temperatures, the Gulf stream, barometric measurement of heights, arcs of meridian, glacial transport of rocks, the volcanoes of the Hawaiian Islands, and various points of meteorology.