pedition to Kertch. He was three times mentioned in despatches (28 Sept. and 11 Nov. 1854, 18 Sept. 1855). He received the Crimean medal with four clasps, the Turkish medal, the legion of honour (5th class), and the Medjidie (4th class). He was made C.B. on 5 July 1855. He was promoted colonel on 26 Dec. 1859, and became regimental major in the Coldstream guards on 22 May 1866. He was promoted major-general on 6 March 1868, and commanded the troops at Malta from 21 Aug. 1875 to 31 Dec. 1878. He became lieutenant-general on 1 Oct. 1877, and was placed on the retired list on 1 July 1881, with the honorary rank of general. He was made K.C.B. on 2 June 1877, and colonel of the Royal Inniskilling fusiliers on 13 March 1886. He died in London on 1 Jan. 1898. He was unmarried.
[His own narrative of his experience in Afghanistan is given, under the title of 'The Cabool Captives,' in United Service Mag., November 1845 to April 1846. See also Times, 3 Jan. 1898; Army Lists.]
AIRY, Sir GEORGE BIDDELL (1801–1892), astronomer royal, was born at Alnwick in Northumberland on 27 July 1801. His father, William Airy of Luddington in Lincolnshire, was then collector of excise in Northumberland, whence he was transferred to Hereford in 1802, and to Essex in 1810. Three years later he lost his appointment and lapsed into poverty. He died on 26 March 1827. His wife, Ann, a woman of strong natural abilities, was the daughter of a well-to-do Suffolk farmer; she died in 1841.
George Biddell was the eldest of four children. At ten years of age he took first place in Byatt Walker's school at Colchester, picked up stores of miscellaneous information from his father's books, and became notorious for his skill in constructing pea-shooters. From 1812 he spent his holidays at Playford, near Ipswich, with his uncle, Arthur Biddell, a farmer and valuer, whose influence upon his career proved decisive. He met at his house Thomas Clarkson [q. v.], Bernard Barton [q. v.], Sir William Cubitt [q. v.], Robert and James Ransome [q. v.], and studied optics, chemistry, and mechanics in his library. From 1814 to 1819 Airy attended the grammar school at Colchester, where he was noted for his memory, repeating at one examination 2394 lines of Latin verse. By Clarkson's advice he was sent to Cambridge, and entered as sizar of Trinity College in October 1819. In 1822 he took a scholarship, and in 1823 graduated as senior wrangler and first Smith's prizeman. His year ranked as an annus mirabilis, and he had no close competitor. On his election to a fellowship of his college in October 1824, he became assistant mathematical tutor; he delivered lectures, took pupils, and pursued original scientific investigations.
Airy's 'Mathematical Tracts on Physical Astronomy' was published in 1826, and it immediately became a text-book in the university. An essay on the undulatory theory of light was appended to the second edition in 1831. For his various optical researches, chiefly contained in papers laid before the Cambridge Philosophical Society, he received in 1831 the Copley medal from the Royal Society. He was admitted to membership of the Astronomical and Geological Societies respectively in 1828 and 1829, and was awarded in 1833 the gold medal of the former body for his detection of the 'long inequality' of Venus and the earth, communicated to the Royal Society on 24 Nov. 1831. The Lalande prize followed in 1834, and on 9 Jan. 1835 he was elected a correspondent of the French Academy of Sciences.
A trip to Scotland with his sister, Elizabeth Airy, in the summer of 1823 had 'opened,' he said, 'a completely new world to him.' In the ensuing winter he stayed in London with Sir James South [q. v.], met Sir Humphry Davy and Sir John Herschel, and had his first experience of practical astronomy. During a walking tour in Derbyshire in 1824 he proposed, after two days' acquaintance, for Richarda, eldest daughter of Richard Smith, rector of Edensor, near Chatsworth, and received a benignant refusal. Thenceforth he concentrated his efforts upon securing a position in life and an income. In 1826 and 1826 he led reading parties to Keswick and Orleans, seeing much, on the first occasion, of the poets Southey and Wordsworth, and making acquaintance in Paris, on the second, with Laplace, Arago, Pouillet, and Bouvard. On 7 Dec. 1826 he was elected Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge; but the emoluments of the office—99l. per annum, with 100l. as ipso facto member of the board of longitude—very slightly exceeded those of his relinquished tutorship. Airy renewed the prestige of the Lucasian chair by his ardour for the promotion of experimental physics in the university. In his lectures on light he first drew attention to the defect of vision since called 'astigmatism,' from which he personally suffered. A trip to Dublin in 1827 in quest of the vacant post of astronomer royal in Ireland led to no result; but on 6 Feb. 1828 he succeeded Robert
