George Cox Bompas (18 April 1827 – 23 May 1905) was a British solicitor and astronomer.
George C. Bompas | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 18 April 1827 |
| Died | 23 May 1905 |
| Occupation(s) | Solicitor, astronomer |
Bompas was born in Bloomsbury. He was the second son of Serjeant Charles Carpenter Bompas.[1] His brother was William Bompas.[2]
Bompas was admitted as a solicitor in 1850 and continued to practice until 1903.[1] He worked for the law firm Bischoff, Coxe and Bompas and was a solicitor for several of their companies. He later was employed as a lawyer in the George Earl Church debt contract with Bolivia.[3]
He married May Anne Scott Buckland, daughter of Rev. William Buckland, in 1860. They had four children.[1] Bompas took interest in astronomy and studied periodic meteor showers and the Zodiacal light. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on 14 December 1894.[4] He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Geological Society and the Paleontological Society.[1]
In 1896, Bompas authored a paper for the Victoria Institute of which he was a member titled "On evolution and design" which argued for a form of theistic evolution.[5] This was controversial because such a position usually invited disapproval from the Victoria Institute's membership who favoured creationism. However, Bompas was a solicitor from a well-regarded Baptist family so his paper received an unusually mild reaction.[5]
Selected publications
edit- Life of Frank Buckland: By his Brother-in-Law (1888)
- The Problem of the Shakespeare Plays (1902)
References
edit- ^ a b c d "Obituary Notices: Fellows: Bompas, George Cox". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 66: 163. 1906. Bibcode:1906MNRAS..66Q.163.. doi:10.1093/mnras/66.4.163.
- ^ Pearce, Ernest Harold (1912). . Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). Vol. 1. pp. 190–192.
- ^ Flandreau, Marc. (2016). Anthropologists in the Stock Exchange: A Financial History of Victorian Science. University of Chicago Press. p. 174. ISBN 978-0-226-36030-0
- ^ Abney, W. de W. (1894). "George Cox Bompas, F.G.S., F.R.G.S., 121 Westbourne Terrace, Hyde Park, W". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 55 (2): 51–52. doi:10.1093/mnras/55.2.51.
- ^ a b Mathieson, Stuart. (2020). Evangelicals and the Philosophy of Science: The Victoria Institute, 1865-1939. Routledge. p. 68. ISBN 978-0367856700