Brian G. W. Manning

Brian George William Manning (14 May 1926 – 10 November 2011) was an English astronomer who discovered 19 minor planets. He was born in 1926 in Birmingham. He constructed his first mirror from a piece of glass that a World War II bomb blew out of the roof of the factory where his father worked. He began as an engineering draughtsman but later became a metrologist at the University of Birmingham. In the late 1950s, he constructed an interference-controlled ruling machine in a home workshop, which was able to rule high-quality 3 by 2 inch gratings. In 1990, he received the H. E. Dall prize of the BAA.