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Rev. Thomas Dick

Thomas Dick (November 24, 1774 in Hilltown, Dundee - July 29, 1857), was a Scottish scientific teacher and writer known for his works on astronomy. Thomas was a religious man, he also wrote ethical and theological works.

Thomas was brought up in the strict tenets of the United Secession Church of Scotland, and his father, Mungo Dick, a small linen manufacturer, designed for him his own trade. But the appearance of a brilliant meteor impressed him, when in his ninth year, with a passion for astronomy; he read, sometimes even when seated at the loom, every book on the subject within his reach; begged or borrowed some old pair of spectacles, contrived a machine for grinding them to the proper shape, and, having mounted them in pasteboard tubes, begain celestial observations. His parents, at first afflicted by his eccentricities, left him at sixteen to choose his own way of life.

Dick became assistant at a school in Dundee, and in 1794 entered the University of Edinburgh, supporting himself by private tuition. His philosophical and theological studies terminated, he set up a school at Dundee, took out a license to preach in 1801, and officiated as probationer during some years at Stirling and elsewhere. An invitation from the patrons to act as teacher in the Secession School at Methven led to a ten year's residence there, distinguished by efforts on his part towards popular improvement, including a zealous promotion of the study of science, the foundation of a people's library, and what was substantially a mechanic's institute. Under the name Literary and Philosophical Societies, adapted to the middling and lower ranks of the community, the extesion of such establishments was recommended by him in five papers published in the Monthly Magazine in 1814; and, a year or two later, a society was organized near London on the principles there laid down, of which he was elected an honorary member.

As an undergraduate, Dick had several noteworthy classmates at the University of Edinburgh including Robert Brown, Joseph Black, and Robert Jameson.

On leaving Methven, Dick spent another decade as a teacher at Perth, Scotland. During this interval he made his first independent appearance as an author. The Christian Philosopher, or the Connexion of Science and Philosophy with Religion, was published in 1823. It ran quickly through several editions, the eighth appearing at Glasgow in 1842. Its success determined Dick's vocation to literature. He finally gave up school teaching in 1827, and built himself a small cottage, fitted up with an observatory and library, on a hill overlooking the Tay at Broughty Ferry, near Dundee. Here he wrote a number of works, scientific, philosophical, and religious, which, from their licidity and unpretending style, acquired prompt and wide popularity both in the United Kingdom and the United States. Their author, however, made such loose bargains with his publishers, that he derived little profits from them, and his poverty was relieved in 1847 by a pension of 50 pounds a year, and by a local subscription of 20 or 30 pounds. He died, at the age of eighty-three, on July 29, 1857.

An honorary degree of LL.D. was conferred upon him early in his literary career by Union College, New York, and he was admitted to the Royal Astronomical Society on January 14, 1853. A paper on Celestial Day Observations, giving the results of a series of observations on stars and planets in the daytime with a small equatoreal at Methven in 1812-1813, was communicated by his in 1855 to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (xv. 222). He had written on the same subject forty-two years previously in Nicholson's Journal of Natural Philosophy (xxxvi. 109).

Among his works may be mentioned:

• The Mental Illumination and Moral Improvement of Mankind, New York: 1836, developing a train of thought familiar to the writer during his upwards of twenty-six years, and partially indicated in several contributions to periodical literature.
• Celestial Scenery, or the Wonders of Heavens displayed, London: 1837, New York: 1845.
• The Sidereal Heavens, and other subjects connected with Astronomy, London: 1840 and 1850, New York: 1844 (with portrait of author), presenting arguments for the plurality of worlds.
• The Practical Astronomer, London: 1845, giving plain descriptions and instructions for the use of astronomical instruments; besides several small volumes published by the Religious Tract Society on the Telesope and Microscope, The Atmosphere and Atmospheric Phenomena, and The Solar System.

1. Smith, George (1908) Dictionary of National Biography - Volume V: Craik - Drake, edited by Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, London: Oxford University Press.