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John A. Eddy

5 stories mention John A. Eddy on DeadlyCurious.

The Footnote June 26, 2026 · Royal Greenwich Observatory

The Greenwich Astronomer Who Named the 17th-Century Solar Minimum and Married His Best Collaborator

Edward Walter Maunder was Royal Greenwich Observatory's senior solar astronomer from 1873 to 1913. He identified the unusual 1645–1715 sunspot deficit in the Greenwich archive and substantially defined it as a coherent solar-activity phenomenon. He married his junior collaborator Annie Russell in 1895 — and her contribution to the work was substantially larger than the published record acknowledged.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Royal Greenwich Observatory

The Solar Photographer Who Discovered That Sunspots Move Toward the Equator Through Each Cycle

Annie Scott Dill Russell Maunder was a Cambridge-trained mathematician who spent thirty years at the Royal Greenwich Observatory photographing the Sun. She discovered the substantive equator-ward drift of sunspots through the solar cycle and co-authored the historical work that gave her husband Edward Maunder credit for what should have been a joint discovery.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Northern Europe (climate impact zone)

The 90-Year Solar Quiet Period That Probably Helped Killed the Norse Greenland Colony

The Spörer Minimum was a sustained reduction in solar activity from approximately 1460 to 1550. The Sun went almost entirely spotless for nine decades. The associated climate effect contributed to the deeper cold of the [Little Ice Age](/articles/little-ice-age), the [collapse of the Norse colony in Greenland](/articles/erik-the-red-greenland), and the harvest failures of late-medieval northern Europe. It is the older and longer cousin of the better-known [Maunder Minimum](/articles/maunder-minimum) of the late 17th century.

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