Sir Edward Sabine (; 14 October 1788 – 26 June 1883) was an Irish physicist,astronomer, geophysicist, ornithologist, polar explorer, soldier, and the 30th president of the Royal Society.
He led the effort to establish a system of magnetic observatories in various parts of British territory all over the globe. Much of his life was devoted to their direction and to analysing their observations.
Sabine continued to see action in the War of 1812, particularly in the Niagara Campaign in August and September 1814. and it was thanks to the society's recommendations that he was invited to take part that year in Captain John Ross's first Arctic expedition. As the expedition's appointed astronomer, Sabine was told to assist Ross "in making such observations as may tend to the improvement of geography and navigation and the advancement of science in general".
Although the principal purpose of the voyage was to find the Northwest Passage, several objects of scientific curiosity were deemed worthy of investigation, such as the location of the Earth's north magnetic pole and the behaviour of pendulums in high latitudes which provided information on the shape of the earth. Sabine also made ornithological observations. There was intense interest in figuring out what many called "the great remaining physical mystery since Newton's work on gravitation". By the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was widely recognised that the Earth's magnetic field was continually changing over time in a complicated way that interfered with compass readings. It was a mystery which some scientists believed might be associated with weather patterns.
To solve this mystery once and for all, a number of physicists recommended that a magnetic survey of the entire globe be carried out. Sabine was one of the instigators of this "Magnetic Crusade", urging the government to establish magnetic observatories throughout the empire. He also recruited many associates to the cause, most notably James Clark Ross, a nephew of Sir John's, the German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, the Astronomer Royal George Airy at Greenwich Observatory, and Francis Ronalds, Honorary Director of the Kew Observatory. The new instruments were first installed at the Toronto Observatory in the later 1840s as well as at Kew and Greenwich.
In 1852, Sabine recognised from the Toronto records that magnetic variations could be divided into a regular diurnal cycle and an irregular portion. The irregularity correlated very closely with fluctuations in the number of sunspots, whose cyclic nature had been discovered in 1844 by the German amateur astronomer Heinrich Schwabe. Sabine was the first to recognise that solar disturbances affected the Earth's magnetic environment. On 6 April 1852, he announced that the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle was "absolutely identical" to the Earth's 11-year geomagnetic cycle.
The following year, Sabine also made a similar correlation with the Moon, establishing that that celestial body too had an influence on the Earth's magnetic field. He concluded that the Moon must have a significant magnetic field of its own to cause such an effect. But for once he was mistaken; the effect is actually the result of gravitational tides in the ionosphere.
Throughout the 1840s and 1850s Sabine continued to superintend the operation of magnetic observatories throughout the British Empire. The result was Sabine's magnum opus, as complete a magnetic survey of the globe as was then humanly possible.
Later life
Throughout his long life Sabine received numerous decorations for his contributions to science. In 1849, the Royal Society awarded him one of its gold medals for his work on terrestrial magnetism. Sabine was president of the society from November 1861 until his resignation in November 1871. He was a member of the Royal Commission of 1868–1869, for standardising weights and measures. Both Oxford and Cambridge bestowed honorary doctorates on him. He was a fellow of the Linnean Society and the Royal Astronomical Society and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He became a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1869. He had been a member of the American Philosophical Society since 1841.
He married Elizabeth Juliana Leeves (1807–79) in 1826. She was an accomplished woman in her own right, she had assisted her husband in his scientific endeavours for more than half a century. Her four-volume translation of Alexander von Humboldt's monumental textbook of geophysics Kosmos, was published from 1849 to 1858. Edward Sabine wrote an introduction and added notes to this.
Sabine authored numerous books, wrote hundreds of scientific papers (103 of which are cataloged in the Royal Society's collection), and contributed articles and literature reviews on topics related to Terrestrial Physics.