ning had recommended to the home authorities that Grant should be confirmed in the command-in-chief in India; but Sir Colin Campbell had already been nominated, and arrived at Calcutta on 13 Aug. Grant then resumed the command at Madras, which he held until 27 Jan. 1861; he then returned home and was decorated with the grand cross of the Bath on 28 Feb. 1861. His services as temporary commander-in-chief in India at a very critical time were the subject of a warm eulogium in a despatch from the governor-general in council, which elicited an expression from the secretary of state for India of the full concurrence of the government in the statement thus placed on record.
On 15 May 1867 Grant was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of Malta, and at the end of the following year was decorated with the grand cross of St. Michael and St. George. He relinquished this government in 1872, and on 20 Feb. 1874 succeeded Lieutenant-general Sir Sydney Cotton [q. v.] as governor of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, holding the post until his death there on 28 March 1895. He was buried with military honours at Brompton cemetery on 2 April.
Grant married first, in 1832, Jane Anne (d. 1838), daughter of William Fraser Tytler of Aldourie, Inverness-shire, and Sanquhar, Morayshire, by whom he had two sons Alexander Charles (b. 28 Feb. 1833), a colonel on the retired list; and Aldourie Patrick (b. 1835), a lieutenant in the 71st Bengal native infantry, killed in the Indian mutiny in 1857. He married, secondly, on 17 Sept. 1844, Frances Maria (d. 20 Jan. 1892), daughter of Field-marshal Viscount Gough [q. v.], by whom he had five sons.
There are two three-quarter-length portraits in oil of Grant by Mr. G. F. Watts one in uniform, in possession of the royal horse guards; the other in plain clothes, belonging to the family.
[India Office Records; Despatches; London Times, 29 March 1895; Army Lists; Gough and Innes's Sikhs and Sikh Campaigns; Thackwell's Second Sikh War; Archer's Punjab Campaign; Shadwell's Life of Lord Clyde; Marshman's Life of Havelock; Augustus Hare's Story of Two Noble Lives; Kaye's History of the Sepoy War; Malleson's History of the Indian Mutiny; private sources.]
GRANT, ROBERT (1814–1892), astronomer, was born on 17 June 1814 at Grantown-on-Spey, Morayshire, where his father was engaged in trade. An illness of six years having interrupted his education, he taught himself, on his recovery at the age of nineteen, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, and mathematics. After some brief study at King's College, Aberdeen, he entered in 1841 his brother's counting-house in London, and there set about collecting materials for a history of astronomy. He pursued his researches in Paris from 1845 to 1847, earning a livelihood by teaching English while attending Arago's and Leverrier's lectures. His 'History of Physical Astronomy from the Earliest Ages to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century,' partially issued by the Society of Useful Knowledge in 1848-9, appeared in a complete form in March 1852, and its remarkable merit was signalised by the award in 1856 of the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal. Grant was elected a fellow of that body on 14 June 1850; he edited the 'Monthly Notices' 1852-60, and sat on the council 1853-60. In 1855 and 1865 he received degrees of M.A. and LL.D. respectively from the university of Aberdeen, and joined the Royal Society in the latter year.
Having qualified as a practical astronomer by working for some months at the Royal O bservatory, Greenwich, Grant was appointed in 1859 to succeed John Pringle Nichol [q. v.l as professor of astronomy and director of the observatory in the university of Glasgow. The only available part of its equipment was a six-inch transit-circle by Ertel, and with it Grant made a long series of meridian observations, the results of which were embodied in 'A Catalogue of 6415 Stars for the Epoch 1870,' published at Glasgow in 1883. The introduction contains a discussion of proper motions. A supplementary 'Catalogue of 2156 Stars' appeared a few weeks after his death. Both are of sterling value, and they were compiled with the minimum of assistance. A nine-inch Cooke equatorial was mounted under Grant's supervision in 1863, and was employed by him for observations of planets, comets, and double stars. He joined the Himalaya expedition to Spain for the total eclipse of 18 July 1860, and from his station near Vittoria watched the disclosure of the chromosphere and prominences, the true nature of which he had been one of the first to infer (Memoirs Royal Astronomical Soc. xli. passim). He originated in 1861 the electrically controlled time service of Glasgow, and co-operated with Sir George Biddell Airy [q.v. Suppl.] in 1865 in determining, by means of galvanic signals, the difference of longitude between Glasgow and Greenwich (Monthly Notices, xxvi. 37). The Leonid meteors of 1866 and 1868, the Andromeda of 1872 and 1885, and the ingress of Venus
