BornDewsbury, Yorkshire, England, 22 August 1908
DiedBexhill, Sussex, England, 24 October 1987
Donald Harry Sadler was a celestial mathematician and superintendent of the United Kingdom Nautical Almanac Office (NAO) from 1937 to 1972, during which time he implemented many administrative advances in the presentation of the Nautical Almanac and associated publications.
Educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sadler joined the Nautical Almanac Office directly from university in 1930. Within 3 years, he was appointed as the deputy superintendent (under Leslie Comrie ) and spent his entire career at the NAO, becoming acting superintendent when Comrie was suspended following disagreements with his superiors about his working methods. The Admiralty Board, which then supervised the operation of the NAO, placed it under the Astronomer Royal, then Sir Harold Spencer Jones, and it became part of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. Sadler’s appointment was confirmed in July 1937.
Sadler implemented...
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Selected References
Wilkins, G.A. “[Obituary of] Donald Harry Sadler” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 32 (1991), 59–65.
Wilkins, George A., “Sadler, Donald Harry (1908–1987)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford: University Press, 2004.
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Murdin, P. (2014). Sadler, Donald Harry. In: Hockey, T., et al. Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9917-7_9402
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