STONE, EDWARD JAMES (1831-1897), British astrono mer, was born in London on Feb. 28, 1831. He was educated at the City of London School, King's College, London, and Queen's College, Cambridge. In 186o he succeeded Main as chief assist ant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. He deduced the solar parallax, first from observations of Mars, obtaining 8.932" (Mon. Not. R.A.S. xxiii. 183), and 8.945" (Mem. of R.A.S., vol. xxxiii.), and secondly from the transit of Venus in 1769 which yielded 8.91" (Mon. Not. R.A.S. xxviii. 255). From the Greenwich transit circle observations between 1851 and 1865 he found for the constant of lunar nutation the value 9.134"• He received the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal in 1869, and in 1870 became astronomer at the Cape.
He produced a catalogue of 12,441 stars to the 7th magnitude between the South Pole and 25° S. declination, published as the Cape Catalogue for 1880. In 1878, he was appointed Radcliffe
Observer at Oxford. At Oxford he extended the Cape observa tions of stars to the 7th magnitude from 25° S. declination to the equator, and collected the results in the Radcliffe Catalogue for 1890, which contains the places of 6,424 stars. Stone observed the transit of Venus of 1874 at the Cape, and organized similar expeditions in 1882. He was president of the Royal Astronomical Society (1882-1884), and drew attention to the old observations at the Radcliffe Observatory by Hornsby, Robertson and Rigaud (Mon. Not. R.A.S., vol. lv.). He died at Oxford on May 9, 1897.
See Proc. Roy. Society, lxii. 1o; Month. Not. Roy. Ast. Soc. lviii. 143 ; The Times, May io, 1897 ; Observatory, xx. 234; Astr. Nach. No. 3426; Roy. Soc. Cat. Scient. Papers.