3-075-006 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Father S. J. Perry, astronomer, 1890. Portrait from a photograph by Messrs. Maull and Fox. 'If the Roman Catholic Church has been often reproached for condemning the doctrine of Galileo two centuries and a half ago, the...[example] of the late Stephen Joseph Perry proves that eminent astronomers can now be found even in the Order of Jesuits, and that ecclesiastical infallibility has ceased to deny the scientific truth of the revolution of the solar system...[Perry was sent] to a small island off French Guiana, on the South American coast, to observe the total eclipse of the sun on Dec. 22 1889, [but] died of dysentery on the 27th. This learned and devoted astronomer, whose death is a real loss to science,...[spent five years] in studying theology at St. Bruno's College, North Wales, and in making a magnetic survey of France. He was ordained Priest in 1866...Though he always suffered greatly from sea-sickness, he made more long voyages for astronomical observations than any other professor, being in 1874 at Kerguelen, and in 1882 at Madagascar, in 1886 in the West Indies, in 1887 in Russia, and finally, in 1889, at a small island in the South Atlantic Ocean'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.