Professor Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819–1900) was born in Naples, Italy, and moved to Britain where he attended the Bedford School in England at age sixteen and became an astronomer. Professor Smyth is best known for his work in astronomy and his study into the Great Pyramid of Giza. He held the titled of Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846-1888. Smyth is the one of the first to come up with the concept of mountain top astronomy, which is still used today. There is even a crater on the moon named “Piazzi Smyth” in memory of the professor, as well as an asteroid.

Charles married a British geologist named Jessica Duncan in 1855 for their honeymoon they traveled to Tenerife to visit the highest peak in the Canary Islands. The couple traveled around much of the Mediterranean and North Africa during their marriage doing research for both of their fields. Her and Charles were both early pioneers in photographic process, and Jessica took hundreds of photographs used in Charles’s reports and publications. Charles Smyth was also a firm believer and teacher of the Anglo-Israel truth, writing many articles in Edward Hine’s publication Life from The Dead, and lecturing on the subject as early as 1867.