Victor Alexander Lowinger (also Loewinger) came to the Cape
Colony from England during the eighteen-nineties. In 1900 he passed the Survey
Certificate examination of the University of the Cape of Good Hope and in 1902
was admitted as a land surveyor in the Cape Colony. He was employed at the
Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, where he reduced field observations made
during the geodetic survey of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the survey
of the border between German South West Africa (now Namibia) and the
Bechuanaland Protectorate (now Botswana). This work was carried out under the
direction of Dr David Gill*. In 1904 he joined the staff of William Morris*,
the superintendent of the geodetic survey of the Transvaal Colony and Orange River
Colony (now the Free State), and carried out precise levelling from Lourenco
Marques (now Maputo) to Pretoria.
While at the Royal Observatory Lowinger also participated in
astronomical work, which was later published as 'Heliometer triangulation of
the southern circumpolar area' (Annals of
the Cape Observatory, 1914, Vol. 11, pp. 1-135) under the names Hough*,
S.S., Goodman, S.L., Lowinger, V.A., and De Sitter*, W. Most of the observations
were made by Goodman and Lowinger, who also carried out most of the early
stages of computation. Lowinger was an early member of the South African
Association for the Advancement of Science.
Around 1906 Lowinger joined the Survey Department of the
Malay States, headed by Col. Hugh M. Jackson*, the former Surveyor-General of
the Transvaal Colony. He resurveyed the primary and secondary triangulation of
the Malay States and after a few years became superintendent of the
Trigonometric Survey of the territory. In 1923 he was appointed
Surveyor-General of the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States. Among
others he published An account of the
primary triangulation of Malaya (1931). In 1932 he was honoured as a Commander
of the Order of the British Empire (CBE).
