John Herschel

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John Herschel

Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (born March 7, 1792 in Slough , † May 11, 1871 in Hawkhurst , Kent ) was a British astronomer and son of the Uranus discoverer Wilhelm Herschel . The first double star and nebula catalogs of the southern sky , which he observed during a five-year stay near Cape Town , go back to him.

Live and act

Description of a machine for resolving by inspection of certain important forms , 1832
Graves of Sir John Herschel and Charles Darwin in Westminster Abbey (2014)

John Herschel was the son of Wilhelm Herschel and nephew of Caroline Herschel . First he became a lawyer, later turned to astronomy like his father and took over the large observatory in Slough in southern England .

Since studying at Cambridge , Herschel had been friends with Charles Babbage , the inventor of the original computer. Together with him he founded the Analytical Society under the direction of Robert Woodhouse during his studies in Cambridge . In 1820 he founded the Astronomical Society with his father, Babbage and others, which became the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831 .

John Herschel discovered that the Magellanic Clouds are not nebulae, but consist of myriads of stars . He published various nebula and star catalogs and introduced the Julian date into astronomy. He was inducted into the Guelph Order as a knight in 1831 , president of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1848 and royal mint master of the Royal Mint in 1850 . Since December 1826 he was an honorary member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg . In 1830 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences in Paris (since 1855 associé étranger ). In 1832 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh . On July 17, 1838 he was given the hereditary title of Baronet , of Slough in the County of Buckingham. On May 31, 1842 he was accepted as a foreign member in the Prussian Order pour le Mérite for science and the arts . In 1854 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society and in 1857 of the Leopoldina .

After completing and adding to his father's catalog on the northern sky, he arrived in Cape Town in January 1834, ten days after Thomas Maclear (1794–1879), and purchased the Feldhausen estate (once Veldhuyzen, in what is now the suburb of Wynberg or Claremont ) where he built his telescope. In its place today stands the Herschel obelisk in the courtyard of the Grove Primary School.

Herschel coined the terms " photography ", " positive " and " negative ". He was friends with David Brewster and William Henry Fox Talbot and persuaded the latter to work on the further development of photography . Herschel discovered a way of preventing silver salts from reacting further after development by fixing them. Its versatility is also demonstrated by the application of the light sensitivity of certain iron salts to photographic processes that were new at the time. He improved the cyanotype . In 1842 he discovered the photographic process for exposing paper images on the basis of colloidal gold, which he called the chrysotype .

Eleven catalogs of binary stars , a catalog of 5079 nebulae and star clusters, was published in 1864. A posthumous catalog of 10,300 double and multiple stars was published in 1874. After a state ceremony, John Herschel was buried in Westminster Abbey next to the graves of Charles Darwin and Sir Isaac Newton .

He had 12 children, including William James Herschel , a co-founder of dactyloscopy .

The "great dizziness"

On August 28, 1835, the New York Sun newspaper published an article about Herschel allegedly observing the moon and seeing human beings with wings. However, research by other journalists revealed that this article was written without the knowledge of Herschel and was incorrect.

Honors

The Herschel Island in the Canadian Beaufort Sea is named after him, as is the place Herschel in South Africa, Mount Herschel in Antarctica and the moon crater J. Herschel . The plant genera Herschelia T.E.Bowdich from the nightshade family (Solanaceae) and Herschelianthe Rauschert from the orchid family are also named after him.

Works

literature

Web links

Commons : John Herschel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sir William Herschel. In: Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved April 25, 2019 .
  2. ↑ The MacTutor History of Mathematics archive on John Frederick William Herschel (English)
  3. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724: Herschel, John Frederick William. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed November 27, 2019 (Russian).
  4. ^ List of members since 1666: Letter H. Académie des sciences, accessed on November 27, 2019 (French).
  5. ^ Fellows Directory. Biographical Index: Former RSE Fellows 1783–2002. (PDF file) Royal Society of Edinburgh, accessed December 19, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c The Order Pour le Merite for Science and the Arts. The members of the order. Volume I: 1842-1881. Gebr. Mann-Verlag, Berlin 1975, p. 46.
  7. ^ Member History: Sir John FW Herschel. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 29, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Member entry of Sir John Frederick W. Herschel at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on September 29, 2018.
  9. ↑ Picasa photo plaque
  10. ↑ Picasa Photo Obelisk
  11. ↑ a b Ariane Stürmer: Bat people on the earth's satellite. In: Spiegel online - one day. Retrieved July 17, 2009 .
  12. ↑ a b s. a. Pierer
  13. ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names - Extended Edition. Part I and II. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin , Freie Universität Berlin , Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5 doi: 10.3372 / epolist2018 .
predecessor Office successor
New title created Baronet, of Slough
1838-1871 		William Herschel
personal data
SURNAME Herschel, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Herschel, Sir John Frederick William, 1st Baronet
SHORT DESCRIPTION British astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1792
PLACE OF BIRTH Slough at Windsor , UK
DATE OF DEATH May 11, 1871
Place of death Hawkhurst , Kent , UK