Robert Thomas Pett spent his entire career as an assistant at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. He was initially appointed as third assistant in June 1876, arriving for duty (presumably from the United Kingdom) on 1 August that year. In August 1884 he was promoted to second assistant, and in September 1900 to assistant. He remained at the observatory to 1919. He became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society on 14 April 1882. On 3 November 1885 he married Mary Elizabeth Bennett at Salt River, Cape Town, and they had two sons and a daughter.

In 1882 Dr David Gill*, director of the observatory, sent Pett to Durban to take temporary charge of the Natal Observatory, which was in the process of being established there. He arrived around the middle of June. The director of the Natal Observatory, E.N. Nevill*, arrived in Durban on 27 November that year, but by this time Pett had probably already left, for on 6 December 1882 he assisted W.H. Finlay* in observing the transit of Venus at a temporary observatory near Aberdeen Road. Among others Pett appears to have made many of the observations on which S.S. Hough* later based his "Ephemerides of 99 circumpolar stars, derived from observations 1830-1917", published in the Annals of the Cape Observatory in 1922.

List of sources:

British1820 Settlers to South Africa. Transcribed marriage entries for PETT. https://www.1820settlers.com/genealogy/settlerbrowsemarrs.php?name=PETT&first=P as on 23 April 2020.

FamilySearch: Robert Thomas Pett. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/GP6Y-6D8/robert-thomas-pett-1860-1926

General directory and guide book to the Cape of Good Hope and its dependencies..., 1885, p. 270; 1886, p. 185).

Gill, D. A history and description of the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. London: HMSO, 1913.

List of Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society. At https://books.google.co.za/books?id=-z40AQAAIAAJ&q=Robert Thomas Pett&dq=Robert Thomas Pett&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj1oYuVi_7oAhVlRBUIHZYoCeEQ6AEITjAF as on 23 April 2020.

National Automated Archival Information Retrieval System (NAAIRS). http://national.archives.gov.za/naairs.htm Documents relating to Pett, Robert Thomas.

National Union Catalogue, pre-1956 imprints. London: Mansell, 1968-1980.

Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository, Vol. CSO 861, Ref. 1882/2330: Letter to Colonial Secretary, 20 June 1882.

Warner, B. Astronomers at the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope. Cape Town: Balkema, 1979.

Compiled by: C. Plug

Last updated: 2025-09-08 10:05:46