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Sir William Peck FRSE FRAS (3 January 1862, Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire – 7 March 1925, Edinburgh) was a Scottish astronomer and scientific instrument maker.
Sir William Peck FRSE FRAS (3 January 1862, Castle Douglas, Kirkcudbrightshire – 7 March 1925, Edinburgh) was a Scottish astronomer and scientific instrument maker.
He was born in Castle Douglas in Kirkcudbrightshire on 3 January 1862, the son of William Peck. His family moved to Edinburgh in his youth and here he worked in a glue factory in the Gorgie district for Robert Cox. Cox asked him to run a private observatory. From 1883, despite a lack of formal university training, he began lecturing in Astronomy.[1]
He was the director of the Edinburgh City Observatory from 1889 until his death.[2] In the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Robert Cox, Sir Arthur Mitchell, Alexander Buchan and the 8th Duke of Argyll.[3] From 1893 to 1896 he was involved in the relocation of the Edinburgh Observatory from Calton Hill to Blackford Hill.[4]
In 1898 he founded the Madelvic Motor Carriage Company, one of the world's first factories making electric cars, at the Madelvic Works at Granton, Edinburgh.[1]
He continued to live at Observatory House on Calton Hill in Edinburgh even after the observatory moved to Blackford Hill.[5]
He also belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret occult society founded in the late 1800s. Among the members of the Golden Dawn, there was Irish poet W B Yeats, actress Florence Farr, Oscar Wilde's wife Cobstance Mary, Bram Stocker and obviously Aleister Crowley.
He was knighted by King George V in 1917.
He died at his home in Inverleith Row in Edinburgh on 7 March 1925. He is buried in Warriston Cemetery in the upper section, on the north side of the main east-west path.
In 1889 he married Christina Thomson (1865-1922).
