Ernest Cuthbert Atkinson (1873-1940), a man of many scientific and sporting interests, is probably best remembered in the field of astronomy for his work on precision timekeeping.

Born in Beckenham, Kent, he studied at Merchant’s Taylors’ school before obtaining firsts in mathematics and physics at St John’s College, Oxford, where he also excelled at rowing. At Oxford, he designed a ‘Rowing Indicator’ which gave a continuous record of style and horsepower of an oarsman. After Oxford, he worked as assistant master for mathematics and physics at Rugby School, and as curator of the Temple Observatory there. After a short period on a geodetic survey in the Transvaal and Orange River Colonies, he returned to England in 1906 to become assistant master at Clifton College, where he remained until his retirement in 1922.

In 1927 he took up the study of precision timekeeping for astronomical observatory work, publishing influential papers in the Proceedings of the Physical Society. He himself designed and constructed several clocks, making all the operating mechanisms to a beautiful finish, including a seconds pendulum which proved remarkably accurate.

He had a life-long interest in clocks and timekeeping, and throughout his life kept close contact with researchers on timekeeping at the observatories at Greenwich, Paris, Hamburg, and the USA, as well as with amateur enthusiasts, such as C.O. Bartrum, playing a major part in the acceptance of the latter’s pendulum by the Science Museum. He was elected as a Fellow of the RAS in 1904. Atkinson never married and died in 1940 after a short illness.