Alexander Ross Clarke
British geodesist (1828–1914)
Alexander Ross Clarke FRS FRSE (1828–1914) was a British geodesist, primarily remembered for his calculation of the Principal Triangulation of Britain (1858), the calculation of the Figure of the Earth (1858, 1860, 1866, 1880) and one of the most important text books of Geodesy (1880). He was a military officer of the Royal Engineers employed on the Ordnance Survey, attaining the rank of colonel.
Biographical details
Sources
The basic sources of material on Clarke are the two articles by Charles Close, one of the Directors of the Ordnance Survey. The first was an article for the Royal Engineers Journal (Close 1925) and the second, a revised and expanded version, appeared in the Empire Survey Review(Close 1943). Although Close was almost thirty years younger than Clarke, and joined the Ordnance Survey only after Clarke's retirement, they knew each other well and they collaborated on the article Map for the eleventh edition of Encyclopædia Britannica. Much of Close's material is incorporated in the web page REubique (de Santis 2002) along with details of his military career and further information communicated by one of Clarke's living descendants. Other sources of information are to be found in the Times of London and obituaries in several learned societies.
Two recent histories of the Ordnance Survey include information on Clarke: Owen and Pilbeam, and Seymour.
Family background and education 1828–1850
Clarke was born in Reading, Berkshire, England on 16 December 1828. His Scottish father, David Ross Clarke, had travelled to Jamaica as a young merchant and there he married Elizabeth (Eliza) Ann Hall, the daughter of Colonel Charles William Hall and Isabella Ann Ford, on 8 March 1827 in Kingston.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q595699. VIAF identifies the subject as 39758953. The Library of Congress control number is no2012108421. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1828, 1914, 1858 and 1860.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alexander Ross Clarke” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.