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People: John Leslie Rudd


Name Rudd, John Leslie
 
Place of work Greenwich & Abinger
 
Employment dates
 1 Feb 1930 – 11 Mar 1955
 
Posts 1 Feb 1930 Supernumerary Computer
1938/9 Junior Assistant
1948/9 Regraded as Experimental Officer
 


Born 21 Feb 1914
 
Died 11 Mar 1955 (age 41), on route to a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society

John Leslie Rudd was one of the last of the Boreman Boys (boys who were educated by the Boreman Foundation at the Royal Hospital School in Greenwich) to be taken on at the Observatory as a Supernumerary Computer. Initially he worked on Time Signals and Chronometers, but in 1935/6, his duties were extended to helping Finch with the Small Transit Telescope. When the Supernumerary posts were abolished in 1937, many of the incumbents became established as Junior Assistants. Although Rudd was considered to be a suitable candidate, he appears to have left the Observatory at this point (his obituary implies he was transferred to the Tidal Branch of the Admiralty). He seems to have rejoined the Observatory in 1938/9 as a Junior Assistant where he was assigned to work on the Transit Circle, ledgering and miscellaneous reductions. In 1940, He was relocated with the Time Department to Abinger. In 1941, he married Betty Fry, whose parents both worked at the Observatory (F Fry worked as a Night Watchman / Messenger). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1944. At Abinger, he worked in the Time Department, where he was involved in the day-to-day running of the Time Service. He was a regular observer on the Bamberg Broken Transit instrument. His younger brother FL Rudd was employed as a temporary computer in 1935.

 

Obituary

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 116, p.158