Vice-Chancellors

Henry Chamberlaine Russell CMG

Henry Chamberlaine Russell CMG was a Fellow of Senate of the University of Sydney elected by a Convocation of electors to fill a vacancy from 1875 to 1907, during which period he was elected Vice-Chancellor by and from the Fellows from 1891 to 1892.

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(1836 - 1907)
BA, FRS
Fellow of Senate: 1875 - 1907
Vice-Chancellor: 1891 - 1892

Henry Chamberlaine Russell, astronomer, meteorologist and one of the most eminent men of science in Australia in the nineteenth century, was born in West Maitland, New South Wales on 17 March 1836.

Educated at West Maitland Grammar School and the University of Sydney (BA, 1859), Henry joined the Sydney Observatory, and succeeded G R Smalley as government astronomer on 12 July 1870. He invented and made many instruments including telescope mountings and self-recording meteorological devices. He exchanged weather data by wire, set up a system of forecasting and from February 1877 released a daily weather map to the press. In Sydney that year he published his Climate of New South Wales. In 1879 he presided over the first Intercolonial Meteorological Conference held in Australia, began river records and published a seminal paper on artesian water in the Darling basin. His Physical Geography and Climate of New South Wales first appeared in 1884.

In 1887 Russell attended the International Astrophotographic Congress in Paris and then visited other Continental observatories. By 1893 he had remeasured all the principal stars in J F W Herschel's Results of Astronomical Observations … at the Cape of Good Hope (London, 1847) and discovered 500 new double stars. He was also a dedicated natural historian, interested in terrestrial magnetism, underground water, the growth rate of trees, the effects of vegetation upon climate, the artificial production of rain and the measurement of tides and seiches.

Russell was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1871 and of the Meteorological Society and a member of the Royal Colonial Institute in 1875. In 1886 he was the first graduate of the University of Sydney to be elected a ellow of the Royal Society. Four times president of the local Royal Society, in 1888 he was the first president of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science. Made CMG in 1890, he was a founder of technical education in the colony and a vice-president of the Board of Technical Education from 1883.

He was a Fellow of the Senate of the University of Sydney in 1875-1907 and Vice-Chancellor in 1891-92.

Russell suffered a severe illness in 1903 and after a year's leave of absence retired. He died at the observatory on 22 February 1907.

Information taken from the Australian Dictionary of Biography