page_title: N. R. Pogson
section_title: Youth and education
hierarchical_section_title: N. R. Pogson / Youth and education
caption_attribution_description: Norman Robert Pogson, CIE (23 March 1829 – 23 June 1891)
context_page_description: Norman Robert Pogson, CIE was an English astronomer who worked in India at the Madras observatory. He discovered several minor planets and made observations on comets. He introduced a mathematical scale of stellar magnitudes with the ratio of two successive magnitudes being the fifth root of one hundred and referred to as Pogson's ratio.
context_section_description: Norman was born in Nottingham, the son of George Owen Pogson, a hosiery manufacturer, lace dealer and commission agent, "with enough income to support an extended family", and his wife, Mary Ann. It was intended that he should follow his father into business, and he was accordingly sent for "commercial education", but he was fascinated by science, and his mother supported and encouraged this interest. His early education was largely informal. He left school at 16, intending to teach mathematics. At the age of eighteen, he calculated with the help of John Russell Hind of the Royal Astronomical Society, the orbits of two comets. He was introduced to astronomy through George Bishop's Observatory at South Villa Regent's Park from 1846. He took an interest in comets and studied Iris, a minor planet that had been recently discovered. He was engaged as an assistant at the Radcliffe Observatory in 1852; a new Heliometer had been installed there in 1850.
caption: Pogson in academic gown
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