De la Rue, Warren

Born Isle of Guernsey, United Kingdom, 15 January 1815

Died London, England, 19 April 1889

Warren de la Rue pioneered the application of photography to the study of the Moon and Sun, in the process demonstrating the value of an equatorially mounted, clock‐driven reflecting telescope as a camera, techniques that greatly accelerated the evolution of the new science of astrophysics. The son of Thomas de la Rue, a printer, and Jane (née Warren), de la Rue was educated at the Collège Sainte‐Barbe in Paris and later studied with the noted chemist August Wilhelm Hofmann in London. While still in his youth, de la Rue joined his father's printing business, where he showed a talent for mechanical innovation. He was among the first printers to adopt the electrotyping process and was coinventor (with Edwin Hill) of the envelope‐making machine.

De la Rue's earliest scientific contributions were in the field of chemistry. In 1836, he published his first paper, describing an