August 21, 2018 Glaisher, Mathematician

The Liberty Gazette

August 21, 2018

Ely Air Lines By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: To introduce our story last week about William Rankin, the man who rode thunder, I began with a tip of the hat to Charles Peirce, an ancestor of mine who wrote a book chronicling his 57 years of meteorological research.

I get excited when my family’s genealogy intersects with aviation or weather. Now, in a very strange and fascinating turn of events, I have discovered some old facts that lead to one of those intersections in an odd way.

Superstar mathematician and astronomer James Glaisher (senior) was the Superintendent of the Magnetical and Meteorological Department at the Royal Observatory in England. He was the first to recognize the existence of the stratosphere. This is a humongous achievement.

He had a son named after him whom the family called Lee. The elder Glaisher made balloon ascents, sometimes with Lee aboard. Here’s a description from the Report of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society of 1862:

“One of the main objects of [Glaisher’s] ascents was to extend and improve our knowledge of the relation which exists between increase of elevation and the corresponding variations of temperature and moisture, these variations in their turn having an intimate bearing on the theoretic determination of atmospheric refraction. The results of Mr. Glaisher's observations indicate that the [current] hypothesis ... must be abandoned ...”

Game changer!

The junior Glaisher also showed signs of mathematic genius and graduated from Trinity University in Cambridge (UK), second in his class of 1871. Well-known among his classmates for flying balloons with his dad, as the eventual Dr. Glaisher crossed the stage to receive his undergraduate degree, all the students sang a tune, “Up in a balloon, boys,” in honor of the work of his dad.

I descend from none of the above. However, years later, 1917, the younger Dr. Glaisher attended a Sotheby’s auction and found some items of interest, namely, personal papers of John Napier, the inventor of logarithms.

Among those papers was a contract between Napier and Sir Robert Logan, the 7th and Last Baron of Restalrig (Scotland). Cousin Robert hired his buddy Napier to figure out if there was any buried treasure inside his castle.

Thanks to Dr. Glaisher for donating the contract to Trinity University, and thanks to them for sending me a photo of the actual handwritten contract as well as the typed version, I set about to translate Scottish Gaelic into modern-day English.

The contract is clear that if treasure was found, Napier would get one-third and the signed paper would be destroyed. Since it still exists, we presume poor Cousin Robert didn’t have any buried treasure in that castle.

We’re planning to visit the castle ruins next year. Not much remains more than a rock, but its strategic location on the shore not far from Edinburgh made it ripe for some historical events in the life of Scotland. So even if I only get to see a rock on a cliff and there’s no treasure left to me in a will, it will be a fun trip.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com