Royal Mail will honor 10 famous people on its Eminent Britons set to be issued Oct. 8.

Radio-astronomer Professor Sir Martin Ryle is Britain’s contribution to the 2009 Europa theme of Astronomy.

The set marks the birth centenaries of tennis champion Fred Perry, footballer & manager Sir Matt Busby and the founder of the charity Mencap, Judy Fryd, the bicentenary of the birth of politician William Gladstone, and the tercentenary of the birth of lexicographer Samuel Johnson. Writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859, feminist Mary Wollstonecroft in 1759, and composer Henry Purcell in 1659. The breaking of the water speed record by Donald Campbell in 1959 and the publication of Third Cambridge Catalogue of Radio Sources (3C) by Professor Martin Ryle’s Radio Astronomy Group in the same year are also marked.

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