E Walter Maunder

Edward Walter Maunder (12 April 1851 - 21 March 1928) was a British astronomer best remembered for his study of sunspots and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 that is now known as the Maunder Minimum. Maunder was born in 1851, in London, the youngest child of a minister of the Wesleyan Society. He attended King's College London but never graduated. He took a job in a London bank to finance his studies. In 1873 Maunder returned to the Royal...See more

Edward Walter Maunder (12 April 1851 - 21 March 1928) was a British astronomer best remembered for his study of sunspots and the solar magnetic cycle that led to his identification of the period from 1645 to 1715 that is now known as the Maunder Minimum. Maunder was born in 1851, in London, the youngest child of a minister of the Wesleyan Society. He attended King's College London but never graduated. He took a job in a London bank to finance his studies. In 1873 Maunder returned to the Royal Observatory, taking a position as a spectroscopic assistant. Shortly after, in 1875, he married Edith Hannah Bustin, who gave birth to six children, 3 sons, 2 daughters and a son who died in infancy.[1] Following the death of Edith in 1888, in 1890 he met Annie Scott Dill Russell (later Annie Russell Maunder, 1868-1947), a mathematician and astronomer educated at Girton College in Cambridge, with whom he collaborated for the remainder of his life. She worked as a lady computer at the Observatory from 1890 to 1895. In 1895 Maunder and Russell married. In 1916 Annie Maunder became one of the first women accepted by the Royal Astronomical Society. See less