Sydney Chapman (January 29 1888 – June 16 1970) was a British astronomer and geophysicist. He was born in Manchester and educated at the Royal Technical Institute, Salford (now the University of Salford), Manchester University and Cambridge University, where he read mathematics.

In his professional life he specialised in astronomy and geophysics. He suffered from depression but was still productive, becoming a fellow of Queen's College, Oxford. He won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1949 and the Copley Medal in 1964. Rather than wait to retire from his Oxford University post at 65, he resigned and began taking research and teaching placements all over the world, mostly in Alaska and Colorado, but as far afield as Istanbul, Cairo, Prague and Tokyo as well. He died in Boulder, Colorado.

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