W. H. Steavenson

William Herbert Steavenson FRAS (26 April 1894 – 23 September 1975) was an English amateur astronomer.

W. H. Steavenson was born in Quenington, Gloucestershire, England, where his father was the Anglican vicar. He lost the vision in his right eye in a childhood accident. The family later moved to Cheltenham.

Steavenson developed an interest in astronomy as a child after receiving a small folding telescope as a gift. A little later he was given a larger telescope and experimented with photographing star fields using a camera attached to the telescope. In September 1911, while still a schoolboy at Cheltenham College, he independently discovered the comet C/1911 S2, but unfortunately for him he did not check his photograph quickly enough and credit went to Ferdinand Quénisset. Nevertheless, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in January 1912 whilst still at school. He is believed to have been the youngest Fellow.

He chose medicine as his profession and became a surgeon, but pursued astronomy his entire life and was a skilled observer. He moved to London to study at Guy's Hospital, setting up home at West Norwood. He subsequently practised medicine there as a family doctor. He erected there an observatory with 15-inch (38-cm) aperture reflecting telescope. He concentrated on variable stars, planets and their satellites, and comets, and also observed the remnants of old novae like Nova Persei 1901. He later set up a 20.5-inch (52-cm) aperture reflector.

Steavenson studied how the human eye operates, particularly at the low-light levels encountered in visual astronomy. He measured the diameter of the pupil of a dark-adapted eye to be 1/3 inch (8mm), which was larger than the figure that was believed at that time.

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