British astronomer (1792–1871)
John Herschel
| Scientist: Sir John Frederick William Herschel |
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| Art Encyclopedia: Sir John (Frederick William) Herschel |
(b Slough, 7 March 1792; d Collingwood, Kent, 11 May 1871). English artist, photographer, scientist and writer. The only son of the astronomer Sir William Herschel (1738-1822), John Herschel emerged as a commanding figure in 19th-century British science, making significant contributions to mathematics while still at school. Herschel's scientific viewpoint came from the 18th-century 'natural philosopher's' desire to pursue an eclectic exploration of the physical world. At the same time he was equally conversant with the implications of the explosive technological growth and change of the 19th century, when the term 'natural philosopher' gave way to 'scientist'.
See the Abbreviations for further details.
| Biography: Sir John Frederick William Herschel |
The English astronomer Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871) is noted for his observations of the stars in the southern hemisphere.
John Herschel was born at Slough on March 7, 1792, son of William Herschel, the most eminent astronomer of the period. His early training was in mathematics at Cambridge, where he graduated first in his class in 1813. He quickly established himself with the production of mathematical papers, which earned him the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.
Soon after graduation Herschel and two classmates composed a textbook on the calculus, which was aimed at, and succeeded in, introducing into England the more powerful mathematical methods that had been developed on the Continent during the preceding century. This work, however, signaled both the beginning and the end of Herschel's career as a mathematician. Interested primarily in chemistry, he spent the next few years pursuing it and dabbling variously in law, optics, and astronomy. Not until 1820 did he yield to what he seems always to have regarded as a "birth debt" and turn seriously to astronomy. After serving an apprenticeship to his father for the grinding of an 18-inch telescope mirror, he won his spurs as an astronomer with a 2-year program of double-star observations.
Having fulfilled his obligation for a time, Herschel retired into less intensive observation after 1823, while serving vigorously as secretary of the Royal Society and president of the Royal Astronomical Society. By 1830 his restless but superb intellect had carried him through pioneering efforts in what is now called philosophy of science, to a treatise, On the Study of Natural Philosophy. He was knighted in 1831.
Rather early in his astronomical career Herschel had determined to do a systematic follow-up and extension of his father's imaginative surveys of double stars and nebulas. By 1833 he was through with the northern hemisphere. In the fall of that year, therefore, he moved his family to South Africa for 4 years of observation of the southern skies. This was the first real step toward putting knowledge of the two hemispheres on a comparable basis, and a chief feature in this endeavor was Herschel's inauguration of photometry, the precise measurement of stellar brightness.
Returning to England in 1838, Herschel received honors at Queen Victoria's coronation. He relaxed in chemical researches. Already, in 1819, he had discovered the crucial property of the chemical that has since been used as the photographer's "hypo." Only during Herschel's African sojourn, however, was photography itself actually accomplished, and the art was still in a very primitive state. By 1839 Herschel was right in the thick of things, with the invention of methods of producing images on paper and glass rather than metal, and he introduced "positive" and "negative" in the photographic context.
Herschel devoted most of the rest of his life to the reduction, evaluation, and publication of astronomical data. He died on May 11, 1871, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Further Reading
An interesting biography of Herschel by a noted German scholar is Günther Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel (trans. 1970). Also valuable is Agnes M. Clerke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (1895).
Additional Sources
Buttmann, Günther, John Herschel. Lebensbild eines Naturforschers. Mit 13 Ab, Stuttgart, Wissenschaftliche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1965.
Buttmann, Günther, The shadow of the telescope; a biography of John Herschel, New York, Scribner 1970; Guildford: Lutterworth Press, 1974.
Clerke, Agnes M. (Agnes Mary), The Herschels and modern astronomy, London, New York etc.: Cassell and company, limited, 1901.
Herschel, John F. W. (John Frederick William), Sir, Herschel at the Cape; diaries and correspondence of Sir John Herschel, Cape Town, Balkema (A.A.), 1969; Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.
Herschel, John F. W. (John Frederick William), Sir, Letters and papers of Sir John Herschel from the archives of the Royal Society, Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1990.
Schaaf, Larry J. (Larry John), Out of the shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the invention of photography, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992.
Schaaf, Larry J. (Larry John), Tracings of light: Sir John Herschel & the camera lucida: drawings from the Graham Nash collection, San Francisco: The Friends of Photography, 1989.
Warner, Brian, Maclear & Herschel: letters & diaries at the Cape of Good Hope, 1834-1938, Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1984.
| British History: John Herschel |
Herschel, John (1792-1871). The most eminent physicist of early Victorian Britain. His father William was a famous astronomer, and John went to Cambridge where with Charles Babbage he reformed the mathematics course. After toying with law, he turned to physics, working on optics as the new wave theory was coming in, and to astronomy. In 1833 he sailed to the Cape to observe the southern stars (results published 1847).
| Photography Encyclopedia: Sir John Frederick William Herschel |
Herschel, Sir John Frederick William (1792-1871), British photographic inventor and muse. In the dark days of 1839, when Henry Talbot's invention of photography on paper seemed to be losing on every front to the metal plates of his rival, Louis Daguerre, it was Herschel who sustained the English inventor's hopes and who greatly expanded the field of study. So extensive was Herschel's education, and so creative his mind, that on merely learning of the existence of the new art, he independently invented his own process in under a week. Recognizing the need to impose an intellectual discipline on its development, he suggested the name photography itself (to replace Talbot's awkward photogenic drawing), along with the terms positive and negative to describe its productions. His formidable reputation, and the goodwill he enjoyed throughout Europe, did much to bolster his friend Talbot's cause; indeed, it may well have been critical to Talbot carrying on at all. With unlimited curiosity and a fertile imagination unhampered by any considerations of practicality, Herschel invented hundreds of photographic processes. Some presaged later practices, including the first negative on glass (1839). Some were potentially useful, such as the gold-based
— Larry J. Schaaf
Bibliography
- Büttman, G., The Shadow of the Telescope: A Biography of John Herschel (1974).
- Schaaf, L. J., Tracings of Light: Sir John Herschel & the Camera Lucida (1989).
- Schaaf, L. J., Out of the Shadows: Herschel, Talbot & the Invention of Photography (1992)
| Quotes By: Sir John Herschel |
Quotes:
"Music and dancing (the more the pity) have become so closely associated with ideas of riot and debauchery among the less cultivated classes, that a taste for them, for their own sakes, can hardly be said to exist, and before they can be recommended as innocent or safe amusements, a very great change of ideas must take place."
"Self-respect is the cornerstone of all virtue."
| Wikipedia: John Herschel |
| Sir John Herschel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) 1867 photograph by
Julia Margaret Cameron |
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| Born | March 7, 1792 Slough, then Buckinghamshire now Berkshire, England |
| Died | May 11, 1871 (aged 79) Collingwood, near Hawkhurst, Kent, England |
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH, FRS (March 7, 1792 – May 11, 1871) [2] was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor, who in some years also did valuable botanical work.[2] He was the son of astronomer Sir Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel and the father of 12 children.[2]
Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus. He made many contributions to the science of photography, and investigated colour blindness and the chemical power of ultraviolet rays.
Contents |
Early life and work on astronomy
Herschel was born in Slough, Berkshire, and studied at Eton College and St John's College, Cambridge. He graduated as Senior wrangler in 1813.[3] It was during his time as an undergraduate that he became friends with Charles Babbage and George Peacock.[2] He took up astronomy in 1816, building a reflecting telescope with a mirror 18 inches (460 mm) in diameter and with a 20-foot (6.1 m) focal length. Between 1821 and 1823 he re-examined, with James South, the double stars catalogued by his father. For this work he was presented in 1826 with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (which he won again in 1836), and with the Lalande Medal of the French Institute in 1825, while in 1821 the Royal Society bestowed upon him the Copley Medal for his mathematical contributions to their Transactions. Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1831.[2]
His A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy published early in 1831 as part of Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet cyclopædia set out methods of scientific investigation with an orderly relationship between observation and theorising. He described nature as being governed by laws which were difficult to discern or to state mathematically, and the highest aim of natural philosophy was understanding these laws through inductive reasoning, finding a single unifying explanation for a phenomenon. This became an authoritative statement with wide influence on science, particularly at the University of Cambridge where it inspired the student Charles Darwin with "a burning zeal" to contribute to this work.[4][5]
Visit to South Africa
Declining an offer from the Duke of Sussex that they travel to South Africa on a Navy ship, Herschel and his wife paid £500 for passage on the 'S.S. Mountstuart Elphinstone', a ship of 611 tons, which departed from Portsmouth on 13 November 1833. The voyage to South Africa was made in order to catalogue the stars, nebulae, and other objects of the southern skies.[2] This was to be a completion as well as extension of the survey of the northern heavens undertaken initially by his father Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel. He arrived in Cape Town on 15 January 1834 and set up a private 21 ft (6.4 m) telescope at Feldhausen at Wynberg. Amongst his other observations during this time was that of the return of Comet Halley. Herschel collaborated with Thomas Maclear, the Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope, and the two families became close friends.
However, in addition to his astronomical work, this voyage to a far corner of the British empire also gave Herschel an escape from the pressures under which he found himself in London, where he was one of the most sought-after of all British men of science. While in southern Africa, he engaged in a broad variety of scientific pursuits free from a sense of strong obligations to a larger scientific community. It was, he later recalled, probably the happiest time in his life. In an extraordinary departure from astronomy, he combined his talents with those of his wife, Margaret, and between 1834 and 1838 they produced 131 botanical illustrations of fine quality, showing the Cape flora. John Herschel used a camera lucida to obtain accurate outlines of the specimens and left the details to his wife. Even though their portfolio had been intended as a personal record, and despite the lack of floral dissections in the paintings, their accurate rendition makes them more valuable than contemporary collections. Some 112 of the 132 known flower studies were collected and published as "Flora Herscheliana" in 1996.
As their home during their stay in the Cape, they had selected 'Feldhausen', an old estate on the south-east side of Table Mountain. Here he set up his reflector to begin his survey of the southern skies. Intrigued by the ideas of gradual formation of landscapes set out in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, he wrote to Lyell on 20 February 1836 praising the book as a work which would bring "a complete revolution in [its] subject, by altering entirely the point of view in which it must thenceforward be contemplated." and opening a way for bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others." Herschel himself thought catastrophic extinction and renewal "an inadequate conception of the Creator", and by analogy with other intermediate causes "the origination of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process".[6] He prefaced his words with the couplet:
- He that on such quest would go must know not fear or failing
- To coward soul or faithless heart the search were unavailing.
Taking a gradualist view of development, he commented
- "Time! Time! Time! — we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as the days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years."
The document was circulated, and Charles Babbage incorporated extracts in his ninth and unofficial Bridgewater Treatise, which postulated laws set up by a divine programmer.[6] When HMS Beagle called at Cape Town, Captain Robert FitzRoy and the young naturalist Charles Darwin visited Herschel on 3 June 1836. Later on, Darwin would be influenced by Herschel's writings in developing his theory advanced in The Origin of Species. In the opening lines of that work, Darwin writes that his intent is "to throw some light on the origin of species — that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers", referring to Herschel.
Herschel returned to England in 1838, was created a baronet[2] and published Results of Astronomical Observations made at the Cape of Good Hope in 1847. In this publication he proposed the names still used today for the seven then-known satellites of Saturn: Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione, Rhea, Titan, and Iapetus.[7] In the same year, Herschel received his second Copley Medal from the Royal Society for this work. A few years later, in 1852, he proposed the names still used today for the four then-known satellites of Uranus: Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.
Photography
Herschel made numerous important contributions to photography. He made improvements in photographic processes, particularly in inventing the cyanotype process and variations (such as the chrysotype), the precursors of the modern blueprint process. He experimented with color reproduction, noting that rays of different parts of the spectrum tended to impart their own color to a photographic paper. He collaborated in the early 1840s with Henry Collen, portrait painter to Queen Victoria. Herschel originally discovered the platinum process on the basis of the light sensitivity of platinum salts, later developed by William Willis.[8]
He coined the term photography and applied the terms negative and positive to photography.[2]
He discovered sodium thiosulfate to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery that this "hyposulphite of soda" ("hypo") could be used as a photographic fixer, to "fix" pictures and make them permanent, after experimentally applying it thus in 1839.
General
Herschel wrote many papers and articles, including entries on meteorology, physical geography and the telescope for the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.[2] He also translated The Iliad of Homer.
He proposed a correction to the Gregorian calendar, making years that are multiples of 4000 not leap years, thus reducing the average length of the calendar year from 365.2425 days to 365.24225.[9] Although this is closer to the mean tropical year of 365.24219 days, his proposal has never been adopted because the Gregorian calendar is based on the mean time between vernal equinoxes (currently 365.2424 days).[10]
In 1836, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
In 1835, the New York Sun newspaper wrote a series of satiric articles that came to be known as the Great Moon Hoax, with statements falsely attributed to Herschel about his supposed discoveries of animals living on the Moon, including batlike winged humanoids.
Herschel Island (in the Arctic Ocean, north of the Yukon Territory), Mount Herschel (in Antarctica) and the crater J. Herschel on the Moon are named after him. So is Herschel Girls School in Cape Town, South Africa, which commemorates his visit to the area.
Influences
- Economics
Family
He married Margaret Brodie Stewart (1810-1864) on 3 March 1829 at Edinburgh and produced the following children:
- Caroline Emilia Mary Herschel (31 March 1830-29 Jan 1909), who married Alexander Hamilton-Gordon
- Isabella Herschel (5 June 1831-1893)
- Sir William James Herschel, 2nd Bt. (9 January 1833-1917),
- Margaret Louisa Herschel (1834-1861), an accomplished artist
- Prof. Alexander Stewart Herschel (1836-1907), FRS
- Col. John Herschel (1837-1921), FRS, FRAS
- Maria Sophie Herschel (1839-1929)
- Amelia Herschel (1841-1926) married Sir Thomas Francis Wade, diplomat and sinologist
- Julia Mary Herschel (1842-1933) married on 4 June 1878 to Captain (later Admiral) John Fiot Lee Pearse Maclear
- Matilda Rose Herschel (1844-1914)
- Francisca Herschel (1846-1932)
- Constance Ann Herschel (1855-20 Jun 1939)
On his death at Collingwood, his home near Hawkhurst in Kent, he was given a national funeral and buried in Westminster Abbey.
Publications
 |
Wikisource has original works written by or about: John Herschel |
- On the Aberration of Compound Lenses and Object-Glasses (1821);[2]
- A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy, part of Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet cyclopædia (1831, new edition 1840);[5][11]
- Outlines of Astronomy (1849);[2]
- General Catalogue of 10,300 Multiple and Double Stars (published posthumously);
- Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects;
- General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters;
- Manual of Scientific Inquiry (ed.), (1849);[2]
- Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects (1867).[2]
Notes
- ^ John Timbs, The Year-book of Facts in Science and Art, London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., 1846
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m "Herschel | Sir | John Frederick William | 1792-1871 | astronomer" (biography), NAHSTE project, University of Edinburgh, NAHSTE-JHerschel.
- ^ Herschel, John Frederick William in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
- ^ Darwin 1958, p. 67–68
Browne 1995, pp. 128, 133 - ^ a b "Darwin Correspondence Project - Letter 94 — Darwin, C. R. to Fox, W. D., (15 Feb 1831)". http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/darwinletters/calendar/entry-94.html#mark-94.f2. Retrieved 2008-12-11.
- ^ a b van Wyhe 2007, p. 197
Babbage 1838, pp. 225–227 - ^ "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, volume 8, page 42" (archive), NASA, 2004, ADsabs.Harvard.edu webpage: Adsabs-MNRAS.
- ^ William Willis
- ^ John Herschel (1849). Outlines of Astronomy. http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/Visualiseur?Destination=Gallica&O=NUMM-94926.
- ^ Duncan Steel (2000). Marking time: the epic quest to invent the perfect calendar. John Wiley and Sons. p. 185. ISBN 9780471298274. http://books.google.com/books?id=fsni_qV-FJoC&pg=PA185&dq=4000+gregorian+divisible+error+herschel&lr=&as_brr=3&ei=LOPHSrG6GYvmkQT28KWrAw#v=onepage&q=4000%20gregorian%20divisible%20error%20herschel&f=false.
- ^ John Hershell, A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy, 1831
References
- Babbage, Charles (1838), The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise (2nd ed.), London: John Murray, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A25&pageseq=1, retrieved 2009-02-02
- Browne, E. Janet (1995), Charles Darwin: vol. 1 Voyaging, London: Jonathan Cape, ISBN 1-84413-314-1
- Darwin, Charles (1958), Barlow, Nora, ed., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809–1882. With the original omissions restored. Edited and with appendix and notes by his granddaughter Nora Barlow, London: Collins, http://darwin-online.org.uk/EditorialIntroductions/Freeman_LifeandLettersandAutobiography.html, retrieved 2008-12-11
- van Wyhe, John (27 March 2007), "Mind the gap: Did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years?", Notes and Records of the Royal Society 61: 177–205, doi:, http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A544&pageseq=1, retrieved 2009-02-02
- Herschel, John. (1830). A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green and John Taylor (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 9781108000178)
- Herschel, John. (1833). A Treatise on Astronomy. Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green & Longman and John Taylor (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 9781108005548)
External links
- Biographical information
- The Herschel Chronicle
- Photographic Process and Early Photograms
- Herschel Museum of Astronomy
- Chronology of Astronomy in South Africa
- Wikisource copy of a notice from 1823 concerning the star catalogue, published in Astronomische Nachrichten
| Awards and achievements | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Hans Christian Ørsted |
Copley Medal 1821 jointly with Edward Sabine |
Succeeded by William Buckland |
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