Article

Sir Edward Sabine

Published Online May 26, 2008

Last Edited March 20, 2014

Sir Edward Sabine, soldier, scientist (b at Dublin, Ire 14 Oct 1788; d at Richmond, Eng 26 June 1883). He fought along the St Lawrence River in Upper and Lower Canada in 1813-14, and then, within the army, went on to a distinguished career in science.

Sir Edward Sabine

Sir Edward Sabine, soldier, scientist (b at Dublin, Ire 14 Oct 1788; d at Richmond, Eng 26 June 1883). He fought along the St Lawrence River in Upper and Lower Canada in 1813-14, and then, within the army, went on to a distinguished career in science. In 1819-20 he made geophysical contributions to PARRY's arctic expedition on the Hecla.

In 1828 he became one of 3 scientific advisers to the Admiralty and, working through that body as well as through the Royal Society and the Royal Artillery, promoted international geomagnetic studies, particularly magnetic observations in Canada. The Toronto magnetic observatory owed its survival in part to his representations. He persistently sought global interrelations between different geophysical phenomena. He was president of the Royal Society of London 1861-71 and of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1852.