Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin

Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin, born on February sixth, eighteen sixty-five, in Cushendun, County Antrim, Ireland, was a distinguished astronomer of French and Huguenot descent. His academic journey began in England, where he attended Marlborough College and later Trinity College, Cambridge. After a brief teaching stint at Lancing College, Crommelin secured a permanent position at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in eighteen ninety-one.

A prominent figure in the astronomical community, Crommelin joined the Royal Astronomical Society in eighteen eighty-eight and served as its president from nineteen twenty-nine to nineteen thirty-one. His involvement with the British Astronomical Association began in eighteen ninety-five, where he held the presidency from nineteen oh-four to nineteen oh-six and directed its comet section for several years, from eighteen ninety-eight to nineteen thirty-eight.

In nineteen ten, Crommelin, alongside Philip Herbert Cowell, was awarded the prestigious Prix Jules Janssen by the Société astronomique de France for their studies of Halley’s Comet. Their contributions were also recognized with the Lindemann prize from the Astronomische Gesellschaft in Germany. Crommelin authored an introductory book on astronomy titled “The Star World” in nineteen fourteen, further solidifying his legacy in the field.

As an expert on comets, Crommelin made significant contributions by calculating the orbits of Comet Pons, Comet Coggia-Winnecke, and Comet Forbes, demonstrating that they were, in fact, the same periodic comet. This discovery led to the unwieldy name