He was a man of generous spirit, extremely conscientious, and completely devoted to duty. He died of cancer, at his house in Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, on 14 December 1894. A portrait is given in ‘Knowledge’ for February 1895. Works His most extensive work in astronomy was the eclipse volume of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which are systematised and discussed the observations of all solar eclipses down to 1878. It was begun with Sir George Airy, but soon devolved on Ranyard alone. Started in 1871, it was completed in 1879. In 1888 his friend Richard Anthony Proctor died, leaving his major work, Old and New Astronomy, incomplete, and Ranyard undertook to finish it for the benefit of the author's family. The chapters which are entirely by Ranyard are those on the universe of stars, the construction of the Milky Way, and the distribution of nebulae. He also succeeded Proctor as editor of Knowledge, to which he contributed a long series of articles upon the sun and moon, the milky way, the stellar universe, star-clusters, the density of nebulae, &c. These papers give his mature views on many problems. His most important investigations were those on nebulae, the density of which he concluded to be extremely low, even compared with the Earth's atmosphere, and on star-clusters, which he regarded as showing evidence of the ejection of matter from a centre, and not gradual condensation, as supposed by Pierre-Simon Laplace References Attribution 1845 births 1894 deaths 19th-century British astronomers Alumni of Pembroke College, Cambridge Members of London County Council Members of Lincoln's Inn Alumni of University College London Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society Villasmundo