BRADLEY, Dr James, one of'the most eminent British astronomers, was born at Sherborne in Gloucestershire in March 1692. He entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1710, and graduated as B. A. in 1714 and as Μ. A in 1717. At the house of his uncle, the Rev. James Pound, himself known as an acute observer, he had found instruments and means for carrying on a regular series of astronomical observations. He became a member of the Royal Society in 1718, and though he took orders in the following year, and was presented to the vicarage of Bridstow, he did not give up his scientific pursuits. He also obtained a small sinecure living in Wales, but in 1721, on his appointment to the Savilian professorship of astronomy at Oxford, he resigned all his ecclesiastical preferments. In 1727 he communicated to the Royal Society his great paper on aberration, a remarkable combination of exact observation and profound induction. Some years afterwards Bradley began his lectures at the Oxford Museum, and in 1742 he was appointed to succeed Harley as astronomer royal. In 1747 his minute observations led him to the second of his great discoveries, the nutation of the earth’s axis. The remainder of Bradley’s life was devoted to the Greenwich Observatory. In 1748 he succeeded in getting a small grant for instruments from the public funds, and in 1752 lie was rewarded with a pension of £250. He continued his labours till 1761, when his health began to give way. He then retired into the country and died at Chaiford, Gloucestershire, in July 1762. The immense mass of useful observations left by him at Greenwich was singularly neglected by English astronomers; but since Bessel presented them in systematic form to the world (see Bessel, vol. iii. p. 616) their true value has been recognized. For ...