Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Ellery, Robert Lewis John
ELLERY, ROBERT LEWIS JOHN (1827–1908), government astronomer of Victoria, Australia, born at Cranleigh, Surrey, on 14 July 1827, was son of John Ellery, surgeon, of that place. After education at the local grammar school he was trained for the medical profession; but attracted by the goldfields of Australia he left England for Melbourne in 1851. He had already interested himself in astronomy and meteorology, and a suggestion made, apparently by Ellery, in the colonial press as to the growing need of an authoritative means of testing ships' chronometers and adjusting nautical instruments for purposes of navigation in Australian waters led the colonial government of Victoria to establish an observatory at Williamstown, four miles from Melbourne, in 1853. Ellery was appointed to organise the observatory and became its superintendent. At the outset the observatory consisted of a time ball on Gellibrand's Point, Williamstown, the ball being dropped at one o'clock local time, which was ascertained by Ellery from sextant observations. A few months later a small transit instrument and an astronomical clock were added, and the arrangement for the time signal made more complete, a night-signal being added by eclipsing the light of the lighthouse at two minutes to eight and suddenly exposing it exactly at eight o'clock ; but for some years Ellery's work was confined to the determination of local time, the finding of the longitude and latitude of the place, and the keeping of a 'Journal of Meteorological Observations.' Meanwhile he was placed in charge for a short time of the electric telegraph line between Williamstown and Melbourne, and in 1858, when the Victorian government resolved to undertake a geodetic survey of the colony, Ellery was entrusted with the post of director. He retained the office till 1874.
In January 1860 a board of visitors was appointed to improve the organisation of the observatory, and Ellery induced the board to remove it from the town of Williamstown, whose growth made that place an unsuitable site, to an appropriate building and location to the south of Melbourne. The new observatory, begun in October 1861, was finished early in 1863. Ellery remained director of the new observatory and government astronomer of Victoria until 1895. As director he was responsible for three catalogues of star places, the first a small catalogue of 546 stars made at the original observatory at Williamstown, and the first and second Melbourne general catalogues published respectively in 1874 and 1890. With a view to examining the nebulae that can only be seen in the southern hemisphere a large telescope was needed, and a new four-foot reflecting telescope ordered in 1865 from the firm of Grubb in Dublin, which took three years to complete, proved on arrival disappointing in its performance.
Ellery thereupon learned the art of figuring and polishing mirrors and put the Melbourne great reflector into order with his own hands. Photographs of the moon were taken with the reflector, and it was used for a systematic revision of all the southern nebulas and for examination of comets as they arrived. Ellery observed the transits of Venus in 1874 and 1882. Under Ellery's control, the magnetic and meteorological work at the observatory grew heavy, and other work was added. He joined in 1887 in the great co-operative scheme of making a photographic chart of the whole sky, and a photographic catalogue of all the stars down to the eleventh magnitude (see Report of Melbourne Observatory for 1891, Monthly Notices, lii. 265).
Ellery was one of the founders of the Royal Society of Victoria, was its president from 1856 to 1884, and contributed many papers to its 'Proceedings.' He identified himself fully with public life in Australia, not alone on the scientific side. In 1873 he organised the Victorian torpedo corps which subsequently became the submarine mining engineers, and he was lieutenant-colonel of the corps. He was elected on 8 July 1859 a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, to whose 'Monthly Notices' he was a contributor from 1855 to 1884, and he became F.R.S. in 1873. In 1874 he was entrusted with an exploring expedition to northern Australia, but bad weather cut the scheme short. He was absent in England on a year's leave in 1875. He was created C.M.G. in 1889. After his resignation of his office of government astronomer in 1895, he joined the board of visitors, and lived in his house in the observatory domain until his death there on 14 Jan. 1908. Ellery married twice: (1) in 1853 a daughter of Dr. John Shields of Launceston, Tasmania (d. 1856); and (2) in 1858 his first wife's sister Margaret, who survived him. Ellery's work is mainly recorded in the 'Astronomical Results of the Melbourne Observatory,' vols. i. to viii. (1869-88), in the 'First Melbourne General Catalogue ' (1874), the 'Second Melbourne General Catalogue' (1890), and in various papers and Reports of the Melbourne Observatory by him in the 'Monthly Notices, R.A.S.' vols. xv. to lv. A 'Third Melbourne General Catalogue' was in preparation at his death.
[Melbourne Observatory Publications, i. Proc. Roy. Soc. lxxxii.; Heaton's Austral. Dict. of Dates.]