John Bevis

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John Bevis (born November 10, 1695 in Old Sarum , Wiltshire , † November 6, 1771 in London ) was an English doctor and amateur astronomer .

Life

Bevis enrolled on April 4, 1712 for medical school at Christ Church, Oxford . After graduating in 1718, Bevis spent several years in France and Italy and continued his studies in medicine. Bevis returned to England probably around 1728 and ran a flourishing medical practice in London around 1730. There he worked as an amateur astronomer. He discovered the Crab Nebula in 1731 , 27 years before Charles Messier's independent rediscovery. He is said to have observed an occlusion of Mercury by Venus on May 28, 1737 .

In 1738 he set up a private observatory in Stoke Newington (North London), with which he compiled a star catalog ( Uranographia Britannica ) up to 1750 , from which a magnificently furnished star atlas was to emerge.

Bevis developed the Leiden bottle to its final form in 1748 together with his London doctor colleague William Watson . The two did without the liquid in the bottle and covered the bottle walls inside and outside with tinfoil.

Bevis was a member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences from 1750 , and in 1765 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society . In 1768 he was accepted as a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . He was friends with James Bradley ; his own observations confirmed Bradley's discovery of the aberration .

Bevis died on November 6th, 1771 after falling from his telescope.

The Uranographia Britannica

Bevis was based on the work of Johann Bayer and John Flamsteed . He combined his own position fixes with those won by Flamsteed at Greenwich and the observations made by Edmond Halley from St. Helena . The star maps comprised 79 constellations and were based on a catalog of 3550 stars ( epoch 1746 - ecliptic coordinate system). It was completely new that the Atlas Bevis' not only represented fixed stars, but also eleven "foggy" objects: today as M1 (Crab Nebula), M31 ( Andromeda Nebula ), M42 ( Orion Nebula ), M44 ( Praesepe ), M45 ( Pleiades ), M11 , M13 , M22 , M35 as well as Omega Centauri and NGC 6231 .

In 1748 he mentioned his work in a letter to Abbé Lacaille . He managed to get over 180 subscriptions to finance the printing of the star maps . However, as the publisher (John Neale) went bankrupt, the printing plates made between 1748 and 1750 were confiscated and the atlas was never officially published. However, some (incomplete) prints had been made beforehand (Bevis sent one of them to Messier, who mentioned it in 1784). At the auction of his estate (1785) three almost complete atlases and a number of sets of star maps were also sold. In 1786 star map sets (only containing 51 maps) were thrown on the market in bound form and under the title " Atlas Celeste ". They give no reference to John Bevis; the “publisher” is unknown.

By 1981 the atlas was almost completely forgotten. In 1998 the Manchester Astronomical Society made a newly discovered copy available to the public on CD-ROM.

literature

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Date of birth according to information from seds.org, the year 1695 can also be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , the Royal Society and the Dictionary of National Biography name October 31, 1693 as a birthday.
  2. ↑ Place of birth according to seds.org, the Dictionary of National Biography as well as the Royal Society names Tenby , Pembrokeshire as place of birth.
  3. ↑ Kevin J. Kilburn: Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Science + Business Media New York, accessed July 18, 2015 .
  4. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter B. Académie des sciences, accessed on September 19, 2019 (French).
personal data
SURNAME Bevis, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English doctor and amateur astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH November 10, 1695
PLACE OF BIRTH Old Sarum , Wiltshire
DATE OF DEATH November 6, 1771
Place of death London