Gore, John Ellard (1845–1910), amateur astronomer and writer on astronomy, was born 1 June 1845 in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, eldest among four sons and one daughter of John Ribton Gore (1820–94), archdeacon of Achonry, Co. Sligo, and Frances Brabazon Gore (née Ellard). He was educated privately before entering TCD, where he obtained a licentiate in engineering (1865). In 1868 he was employed as an assistant engineer by the Indian public works department on the construction of the Sirhind canal in the Punjab, where, using achromatic telescopes of three and four inches aperture, he published his first astronomical observations in Southern stellar objects for small telescopes (1877).
He returned (1877) to Ireland on two years' furlough, retired in 1879 with a pension from the Indian service, and devoted himself to astronomy. Observing chiefly with field binoculars, he became a leading amateur astronomer; he discovered several variable stars, including W Cygni, U Orionis, S Sagittae, and X Herculis, and computed the orbits of a number of binary stars. He contributed over a hundred papers to scholarly journals including the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, and the RIA's Proceedings; in the latter, he published detailed catalogues of variable and suspected variable stars in 1884 and a revised catalogue in 1889. Perhaps his most important contribution was The visible universe (1893), in which he surveyed the whole field of cosmology. He made a valuable study of William Herschel's theory of the system of the stars and compared it with later competing theories; the galaxy, he believed, is a finite system, and similar systems exist at immense distances from it. He translated Camille Flammarian's Astronomie populaire into English (1894), and wrote several excellent works for the general reader, including Planetary and stellar studies (1888), The scenery of the heavens (1890), The stellar heavens (1903), and Astronomical curiosities: facts and fallacies (1909). His magazine articles were republished as Studies in astronomy (1904) and Astronomical essays (1907). A bibliography of his works is given by Fitzgerald (1966), 217–19.
A leading member and hon. associate of the Liverpool Astronomical Society, he resigned his membership and became a founder and first vice-president (1890) of the British Astronomical Association; as director of its variable star section (1891–1900), interest was focused on the search for new novae, new variables, as well as observation of known variables. Elected fellow of the RAS (1878) and of the Société Astronomique de France, he was an hon. member of the Welsh Astronomical Society and a corresponding member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society of Ireland, he wrote A glossary of fossil mammalia for the use of students of palaeontology (1874). He was elected member (1875) and council member (1882) of the RIA, to which he donated 200 books in 1908, and a council member of the RDS; his scientific papers he bequeathed to the Royal Astronomical Society, London. Towards the end of his life, he suffered from failing sight. Respected for his quiet wisdom and gracious courtesy, he never married, had few friends, and lived quietly in lodgings at 27 Haddington Road, Dublin. Run over by a hackney car (18 July 1910) in Grafton St., Dublin, he was killed instantly, and was buried in Mount Jerome cemetery, Dublin.