Abraham Sharp
Abraham Sharp (* 1653 in Horton Hall, Little Horton , near Bradford , Yorkshire , baptized June 1, 1653 in Bradford, † July 18, 1742 in Horton Hall, Little Horton) was an English astronomer , mathematician and instrument maker.
Life
Sharp was the son of the wealthy farmer and merchant John Sharp and his wife Mary. After attending the Grammar School in Bradford, he was an apprentice in 1669 at a haberdashery in Bradford. Possibly he worked in the following years as a teacher for commercial arithmetic in Liverpool, from 1684 he stayed in any case in London, where he found a job with the astronomer Royal John Flamsteed . He initially worked for Flamsteed in two phases, first from 1684 to 1685 for a few months, then from August 1688 to autumn 1690. Flamsteed praised Sharp's work on the Great Wall Quadrant , but disparaged his fulfillment of everyday duties.
After finishing work at Flamsteed, Sharp worked briefly for the academic book and instrument dealer William Court. Then in February 1691 he accepted a position at the Royal Shipyard in Portsmouth . In 1694 he returned to Horton Hall after his eldest brother died.
He stayed at Horton Hall until the end of his life, building instruments, corresponding with numerous scientists and doing calculations. One focus was the collaboration with his former employer Flamsteed. The resulting correspondence has largely been preserved. Among other things, he built a micrometer (1704) for Flamsteed, calculated positions of the moon and planets, as well as extensive tables for the Historia coelestis and created eclipse tables for Jupiter's moons . After Flamsteed's death he corresponded with his assistant Joseph Crosthwait, helped with the new edition of the Historia coelestis Britannica (1725) and made star maps for the Atlas coelestis (1729).
Sharp died on July 18, 1742 at Horton Hall and was buried on July 21 at St. Peter in Bradford, where an honorable memorial was later erected for him. Some of his instruments are preserved in the collections of the Bolling Hall Museum in Bradford, the National Maritime Museum and the Science Museum .
The Sharp lunar crater is named after him.
Fonts
-
Geometry improv'd (London 1717)
- 1. By a large and accurate table of segments of circles, its construction and various uses in the solution of several difficult problems. With Compendious Tables for finding a true Proportional Part, and their Use in these or any other Tables; exemplify'd in making out Logarithms or Natural Numbers from them, to sixty Figures, there being a Table of them for all Primes to 1100, true to 61 Figures.
- 2. A concise treatise of polyedra, or solid bodies of many bases, Both the Regular and others: To which are added Twelve New ones, with various methods of forming them, and their exact Dimensions in Surds or Species, and in Numbers.
literature
- Frances Willmoth: Sharp, Abraham (bap. 1653, d. 1742). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, doi : 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 25206
- W. Cudworth: The life and correspondence of Abraham Sharp. London 1889, digitized
- NS Heineken: Relics of the mechanical productions of Abraham Sharp, the assistant of Flamsteed. In: London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine , 3rd ser., 30 (1847), pp. 25-27
- S. Melmore: Abraham Sharp's universal instrument. In: The Observatory. 61: 248-250 (1938)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Sharp, Abraham |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | English astronomer, mathematician and instrument maker |
| DATE OF BIRTH | baptized June 1, 1653 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Horton Hall, Little Horton , near Bradford , Yorkshire |
| DATE OF DEATH | July 18, 1742 |
| Place of death | Horton Hall, Little Horton , near Bradford , Yorkshire |