Edward Ball Knobel (October 21,1841 – July 25,1930) was a British business man and amateur astronomer.

He started to study law but his love of geology made him change to the Government School of Mines in 1861. In 1862 he changed his career again, starting to work for Bass & Co. at Burton-Brent as an analytical chemist in the brewery department. He rose to become a manager and Head Brewer . He then became a manager of a silk factory in 1875. His final position was with the Ilford Photographic Company .

In 1872 he purchased an 8.5 inch reflector to further his interest in astronomy. His work on a publication about the chronology of star catalogues in 1875 let him to study the work of early arabic astronomers and learn some Arabic and Persian. In 1879 he published a translation of Ulugh Beg's catalogue from a Persion manuscript. He then created a new Almagest translation using all available sources in Greek, Latin, and Arabic. After a long collaboration with C. H. F. Peters, a final collated version was published in 1915.

A crater on Mars was named in his honour.

External link

Obituary

• MNRAS 91(1931)318