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Robert Newton Mayall
1904 - 1989
Robert Newton ("Newt") Mayall, who signed himself as R. Newton Mayall, was born July 19, 1904 and died August 31, 1989. He was a civil engineer, astronomer, sundial authority, and landscape architect. In 1927, he married astrnomer Margaret W. Mayall. They lived in Cambridge and had no children. His firm was Planning and Research Associates, which he owned and closed upon his retirement in the 1970s.
In 1933, he participated in the first Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), established as a WPA in 1933 to aid unemployed architects and produce a detailed record of early American architecture. (Records of his surveys are in the Library of Congress.) He is also known for his work in connection to the restoration of Williamsburg, Viriginia.
As a landscape architect, he became very much interested in sundials. In 1934 he and his wife, Margaret Mayall, a Harvard staff astronomer, wrote a series of articles on sundials and their construction for Scientific American. These were collected together and expanded into a book they jointly wrote on sundials, the well-known and much reprinted Sundials: How to Know, Use, and Make Them (Boston, 1938).
When the Harvard College Observatory acquired the Ernst Collection of Sundials in 1938, Newton Mayall was put in charge of it. He and his wife spent months cleaning and repairing the pieces before they went on public display. Images of this collection were used in their sundial book as well. The Ernst Collection is now part of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard.
Newton Mayall was also instrumental in David P. Wheatland acquiring the Joseph Drecker Collection and the Harrold Gillingham Collection. Many of these items were given to the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments as well.
Mayall was the treasurer (1974-1979) and council member of the AAVSO. He wrote the Sky Observers' Guide (1959), a pocket guide of practical astronomyPlan. He was author of Skyshooting: Hunting the Stars with Your Camera (1949).
He was a member of the St. John Lodge of Masons of Boston.
In 1933, he participated in the first Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), established as a WPA in 1933 to aid unemployed architects and produce a detailed record of early American architecture. (Records of his surveys are in the Library of Congress.) He is also known for his work in connection to the restoration of Williamsburg, Viriginia.
As a landscape architect, he became very much interested in sundials. In 1934 he and his wife, Margaret Mayall, a Harvard staff astronomer, wrote a series of articles on sundials and their construction for Scientific American. These were collected together and expanded into a book they jointly wrote on sundials, the well-known and much reprinted Sundials: How to Know, Use, and Make Them (Boston, 1938).
When the Harvard College Observatory acquired the Ernst Collection of Sundials in 1938, Newton Mayall was put in charge of it. He and his wife spent months cleaning and repairing the pieces before they went on public display. Images of this collection were used in their sundial book as well. The Ernst Collection is now part of the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments at Harvard.
Newton Mayall was also instrumental in David P. Wheatland acquiring the Joseph Drecker Collection and the Harrold Gillingham Collection. Many of these items were given to the Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments as well.
Mayall was the treasurer (1974-1979) and council member of the AAVSO. He wrote the Sky Observers' Guide (1959), a pocket guide of practical astronomyPlan. He was author of Skyshooting: Hunting the Stars with Your Camera (1949).
He was a member of the St. John Lodge of Masons of Boston.
R. Newton Mayall and Margaret W. Mayall, Sundials: How to Know, Use, and Make Them (Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint, 1938).
later editions were published under the title Sundials: Their Construction and Use.
Robert Newton Mayall Papers, Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. Transferred from the AAVSO to CHSI in 2022.
<a href="The Sundial Registry of the North American Sundial Society" target="_blank">http://sundials.org/attachments/article/86/Eastern_US_SundialRegistry_Aug2012.pdf</a> lists many sundials designed or repaired by R. Newton Mayall.
Mayall, 'Dialing the Time', Sunworld, 4:3, 1980, p.109-113.
Mayall, 'Shadows of Time', Yankee Magazine, March 1968.