Charles Pritchard

The Reverend Charles Pritchard was a British astronomer, clergyman and educational reformer, born at Alberbury in Shropshire on 29 February 1808, the fourth son of William Pritchard. He was enrolled as a sizar at St Johns College, Cambridge, graduating as fourth wrangler in 1830, and was elected a fellow of his college in 1832 and ordained the following year. He founded the Clapham Grammar School in 1834, included the sciences in its curriculum, and was its headmaster until 1862. He then retired to Freshwater on the Isle of Wight and became honorary secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1862 and its president in 1866. His career as a professional astronomer began in 1870, when he was elected Savilian professor of astronomy at the University of Oxford, where a new university observatory grew out of his request for an equatorial telescope. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1840, was awarded one of its royal medals in 1892, and died on 28 May 1893.