Richard Anthony Proctor
From Philosopedia
Proctor, Richard Anthony (23 March 1837 - 12 September 1888)
Proctor, an English astronomer, spoke out against religion as being irreconcilable with the facts of science. The honorable secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, he maintained in 1869 the since-established theory of the solar corona.
Attracted by John Henry Newman, Proctor for a time was a Catholic, but when he thought out the question of Catholicism and science he formally renounced religion in a letter to the New York Tribune (November 1875), calling the two irreconcilable.
Further heretical views were shown in his remarks on the so-called Star of Bethlehem in The Universe of Suns, and Other Science Gleanings. Proctor entirely rejected the miraculous elements of the gospels, which he considered largely a rechauffé of solar myths. He pointed out the coincidence between the Christian stories and solar myths, and also with stories found in Josephus.
Using 27 drawings by the English observer William Rutter Dawes, Proctor produced one of the earliest maps of Mars in 1867.
According to his friend Edward Clodd, Proctor was an agnostic to the end of his life. The very last article that Proctor published was a vindication of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll in his controversy with William Gladstone in the North American Review.
Proctor settled in America some time after his second marriage in 1881, contracted yellow fever, and died in New York. He was buried in an unmarked grave. Friends, however, erected a tomb and in 1893 the monument was erected in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery.
