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Auction: 18005 - British and Foreign Coins and Commemorative Medals
Lot: 612

The Royal Society, gold Copley medal, 1824, by J. S. Tanner, g. copley bart. dignissimo, Pallas seated holding wreath and a figure of Nature, named in exergue johannes brinkley s.t.p mdcccxxiv, rev. societas reg. londini, shield of the Royal Society with supporters, nullus in verba in exergue, 33.10g, 43mm. (D&W 160/546; Eimer 540; MI 522/82), light hairlines over otherwise brilliant surfaces, extremely fine and extremely rare, in box of issue

provenance
Glendining, 15 March 1972, lot 117 - £30


John Mortimer Brinkley D.D., F.R.S., M.R.I.A, born either 1733 or 1763 (sources differ), was baptised in Woodbridge, Suffolk in January 1763, the illegitimate son of a butcher's daughter. Despite this inauspicious start, he would gain his Bachelor of Arts from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1788 and his Masters in 1791. The following year he was appointed Andrews Professor of Astronomy at the University of Dublin and took up the new posting as the first Royal Astronomer of Ireland.

Contributing to William Paley's work Natural Theology (1802), his main interests developed in the field of lunar and stellar astrology. In relation to a thesis on the Moon's apsis, he was awarded the prestigious Cunningham Medal of the Royal Irish Academy in 1818. International recognition shortly followed, when in 1822, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. After the award of the Copley medal for services rendered, he was installed as President of the Royal Astronomical Society. He died in Dublin in 1835.

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Sold for
£5,000