Work in India
From 1852, Broun was director of Trivandrum Magnetic Observatory, in Trivandrum, in Travancore, India. Trivandrum is today known as Thiruvananthapuram, and is the capital of the Indian State of Kerala, but then it was the capital of the princely state of Travancore, a territory in a subsidiary alliance with British India. The observatory had been founded in 1841 by Swathi Thirunal Rama Varma, the Maharajah of Tranvacore. The first director of the observatory was John Caldecott (1800-1849). The observatory, which still exists and is now part of the University of Kerala, is one of the oldest of its kind in modern India. The rulers of Tranvacore while Broun was there were Uthradom Thirunal (until 1860) and then Ayilyam Thirunal.
Broun, while still in India, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1853. He also built an observatory on Agastya Mala, the highest peak in Travancore, and helped to found the museum and zoological gardens in Trivandrum. This museum was later demolished and replaced by what is now called Napier Museum. The original zoological gardens still survive as Trivandrum Zoo.
Read more about this topic: John Allan Broun
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