John Herschel Biography

John Herschel – in full Sir John Frederick William Herschel – was born on March 7, 1792 in Slough Buckinghamshire, England. He was the most acclaimed scientist in England from 1830 to about 1860. Like his father, William Herschel, John Herschel studied astronomy. Herschel is best known for ushering in the use of the Julian Day system in astronomy. He also named 4 of Uranus’ moons and 7 of Saturn’s.

Herschel grew up as an only child and attended Eton College at Cambridge University. During his time there, he and some fellow colleagues founded the Analytic Society whose purpose was to introduce mathematical theory into English universities. In 1812, he submitted his first mathematical paper On a remarkable application of Cotes’s Theorem in the Transactions of the Royal Society to the Royal Society. He was elected fellow of the Royal Society the following year. Herschel began to study for the bar in London but soon changed his mind and discontinued his studies at Cambridge University in 1815 when he becomes ill. However, soon after, he returns to the university as a mathematics teacher. His mathematical studies continue into the 1820’s and he is awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society in 1921. Soon after, he changes direction and begins to work more in the astronomical area where part of his motivation to begin work in astronomy was the fact that there was no one to continue the work of his father. In 1820, Herschel is involved in the founding on the Astronomical Society and is named vice-president. John Herschel’s first major task in astronomy was the observation of the double stars cataloged by his father. The movements of these pairs of stars about each other offered the best hope of investigating the gravitational forces operating in the universe.  The catalog that he had compiled between 1821 and 1823 and published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1824 earned him the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society. John Herschel’s sense of accountability to complete his father’s work in astronomy led him to go on a trip to the Southern Hemisphere to survey the skies not visible in England. The bulk of his time was occupied with the Results of Astronomical Observations, Made During the Years 1834–38 at the Cape of Good Hope. This work contains catalogs and charts of southern-sky nebulae and star clusters, a catalog of the relative positions and magnitudes of southern double stars, and his observations on the variations and relative brightness of the stars. Another contribution that Herschel has made to astronomy is the invention of the actinometer in 1825. This device measured the intensity of the sun’s rays. Herschel’s later years were devoted largely to updating previous publications. On May 11, 1871, Herschel died at his home in Collingwood near Hawkhurst in Kent.

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