John PhillipsÕs astronomy 1852-67, a pioneering contribution to comparative planetology

Contemporaries were well aware of the contributions to astronomy of Professor John Phillips (1800-74), a distinguished geologist latterly at the University of Oxford. As part of his research to explain the age and physical processes of observed geological features - mountains, volcanoes, craters and rift valleys - he sought additional evidence by comparison to potentially similar features upon the Moon and even Mars. In the 1850s and 1860s by his innovative comparative method, and his systematic and collaborative approach made possible by his influential position within the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS), he made a pioneering contribution to the evolving new science that in 1905 was designated comparative planetology - the study of the surfaces and atmospheres of planets and satellites instead of simply their positions.