Astronom und Geodäsist. Er starb in Shanghai.
Herbert A. Giles schreibt über ihn in seinen Chinese Sketches (1876):
We were led into this train of thought by an article in the North China Daily News of 10th July 1874, in which the writer speaks of China as "a luxuriant mental oasis amidst the sterility of Eastern Asia," and "possessing a literature in vastness and antiquarian value surpassed by no other."
He goes on to say that the translations hitherto made "have conveyed to us a faint notion of the compass, variety, solidity, and linguistic beauties of that literature." Such statements as these admit, unfortunately, of rhetorical support, sufficient to convince outsiders that at any rate there are two sides to the question, a conviction which could only be effectually dispelled by placing before them a few thousand volumes translated into English, and chosen by the writer of the article himself.
When, however, our enthusiast deals with more realisable facts, and says that in China "there is no organised book trade, nor publishers' circulars, nor Quaritch's Catalogues, nor any other catalogues whether of old or new books for sale," we can assure him he knows nothing at all about the matter; that there is now lying on our table a very comprehensive list of new editions of standard works lately published at a large book-shop in Wu-chang Fu, with the price of each work attached; and that Mr Wylie, in his "Notes on Chinese Literature," devotes five entire pages to the enumeration of some thirty well-known and voluminous catalogues of ancient and modern works.
Werke:
Über den altjüdischen Kalender, zunächst in seiner Beziehung zur neutestamentarischen Geschichte Eine chronologisch-kritische Untersuchung. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Evangelien-Harmonistik Nebst Anhang von Tafeln zur Berechnung altjüdischer Daten von 168 vor bis 72 nach Christus. (1848)
Die Zeitrechnung der Babylonier und Assyrer (1852)
Hülfsbuch der rechnenden Chronologie oder Largeteaus abgekürzte Sonnen- und Mondtafeln, zum Handgebrauch für Astronomen, Chronologen, Geschichtsforscher und Andere herausgegeben, erweitert und erklärt, nebst Beispielen ihrer praktischen Anwendung (1853)
Practical Tables for the Reduction of Mohammedan Dates to the Christian Kalendar 1498 (1856)
A Popular Inquiry into the Moon's Rotation on her Axis 1510 (1856)
A Million's Worth of Property and Five Hundred Lives Annually Lost at Sea by the Theory of Gravitation (1861)
Baby Worlds: an Essay on the Nascent Members of our Solar Household (1863)
"Our Weekly Gossip". A critico-anticritical Medley a-propos of the Editor of the Athenaeum and some other Homunculi ejus generis (1866)