James Gall

James Gall (1808 - 1895) was a Scottish clergyman who founded the Carrubbers Close Mission. As well as writing on religious matters, often from a rather unorthodox standpoint, he had an interest in astronomy. It was his Easy Guide to the Constellations and his People's Atlas of the Stars that brought him to people's attention.

As part of his work in trying to get the celestial sphere on to flat paper he developed a special map projection in which Gall tries not to distort the shapes of the constellations too much. Another advantage of this was that it did not distort the sizes of continents as much as the commonly used Mercator projection. It was re-invented by Arno Peters in 1967 and UNESCO adopted it.

Most of Gall's work was on religion but there is a fascinating book called The Stars and the Angels in which he not only argues for the existence of other inhabited planets but describes the view that Gabriel would have had on his way from heaven to earth to tell Mary that she would have a baby next Christmas. He died at the age of 87 in 1895.