Henry Kater

Henry Kater (16 April 1777 – 26 April 1835) was an English physicist of German descent.

Early life

He was born at Bristol. At first he intended to study law; but he gave up the idea on his father's death in 1794. He entered the army, obtaining a commission in the 12th Regiment of Foot, then stationed in India, where he assisted William Lambton in the Great Trigonometric Survey. Failing health obliged him to return to England; and in 1808, then a lieutenant, he entered on a student career at the Senior Division of the new Royal Military College at High Wycombe. Shortly afterwards he was promoted to the rank of captain. In 1814 he retired on half-pay, and devoted the remainder of his life to scientific research.

Scientist

His first major contribution to science was the comparison of the merits of the Cassegrainian and Gregorian telescopes; Kater determined the latter to be an inferior design.

His most substantial work was the invention of Kater's pendulum, enabling the strength of gravity to be determined, first at London and subsequently at various stations throughout the country. As the inventor of the floating collimator, Kater rendered a service to practical astronomy. He also published memoirs on British standards of length and mass; and in 1832 he published an account of his work on verifying the Russian standards of length. For these services to Russia he received in 1814 the decoration of the order of St. Anne; and the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. In 1826, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Henry Kater (politician)

Henry Edward Kater (20 September 1841 – 23 September 1924) was an Australian politician.

He was born at Bungarabee near Penrith to pastoralist Henry Herman Kater, later a miller and cloth manufacturer, and Eliza Charlotte Darvall. He worked as a junior clerk in Mudgee before acquiring land on the Castlereagh River in 1863, which he then sold. He worked at Wellington as a flour miller and in 1870 married Mary Eliza Forster, daughter of Premier William Forster, with whom he had one son, Norman. In 1879 he settled in Moss Vale, where he became a businessman and pastoralist. In 1888 he served on the local council. He was nominated to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1889 by Premier George Dibbs, but he did not profess loyalty to either the Protectionist or Free Trade parties and was regarded as an independent. Kater remained in the Council until his death in 1924.

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