Brian George William Manning (14 May 1926 – 10 November 2011)^[1] was an English astronomer who discovered 19 minor planets.^[2] 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.^[3] In 1990, he received the H. E. Dall prize of the BAA.^[3][4]

Brian Manning is credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 19 minor planets he made at Stakenbridge Observatory (494), near Kidderminster, England, between 1989 and 1997.^[2] All of his discovered minor planets are asteroids of the main-belt: