Sir Frank Watson Dyson, KBE, FRS,[1]FRSE (8 January 1868 – 25 May 1939) was an English astronomer and the ninth Astronomer Royal who is remembered today largely for introducing time signals ("pips") from Greenwich, England, and for the role he played in proving Einstein's theory of general relativity.
Dyson, fourth from the left, rides in an automobile; possibly during the Fifth Conference of the International Union for Co-operation in Solar Research, held in Bonn, Germany, 1913
Dyson was noted for his study of solar eclipses and was an authority on the spectrum of the corona and on the chromosphere. He is credited with organising expeditions to observe the 1919 solar eclipse at Brazil and Príncipe, which he somewhat optimistically began preparing for prior to the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Dyson presented his observations of the solar eclipse of May 29, 1919 to a joint meeting of the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society on 6 November 1919. The observations confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of the effect of gravity on light which until that time had been received with some scepticism by the scientific community.[11]
Dyson died on board a ship while travelling from Australia to England in 1939, and was buried at sea.[6]
In 1894 he married Caroline Bisset Best (d.1937), the daughter of Palemon Best, with whom he had two sons and six daughters.
Frank Dyson and Freeman Dyson
Although Frank Dyson and theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson were not known to be related, their fathers Rev Watson Dyson and George Dyson both hailed from West Yorkshire where the surname originates and is most densely clustered.[13] Freeman Dyson credited Sir Frank with sparking his interest in astronomy: because they shared the same last name, Sir Frank's achievements were discussed by Freeman Dyson's family when he was a young boy.[citation needed] Inspired, Dyson's first attempt at writing was a 1931 piece of juvenilia entitled "Sir Phillip Robert's Erolunar Collision" – Sir Philip being a thinly disguised version of Sir Frank.
