ABSTRACT
The University of Manchester, founded in 1851 as Owens College, and recipient of a Royal Charter in 1903 raising it to full university rank, is the third oldest 'modern' university of the country. Manchester can claim many titles to fame, and has a pedigree going back to Roman Britain. The greatest gift Schuster made to the University of Manchester was his premature retirement for the express purpose of enabling the University to bring Ernest Rutherford back from Canada to England. The 'Rutherford era' at Manchester between 1907 and 1919 was comparable perhaps only with the 'Einstein decade' of 1905–1915 in its impact on contemporary physics. Astronomy as a part of physics, which had started budding hopefully at Manchester in the first decade of this century with Arthur Schuster, went back to sleep with his retirement, and remained in a dormant state until the end of World War II.
