William Wales

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William Wales (* approx. 1734 ; † December 29, 1798 in London ) was a British mathematician and astronomer .

Life

William Wales was born to John and Sarah Wales around 1734 and was baptized in Warmfield near Wakefield, West Yorkshire. He had a brother John (born 1736) and a sister Sarah (born 1739). According to John Cawte Beaglehole (historian), Wales traveled south as a youth with a Mr. Holroyd, who turned out to be a plumber in the wake of King George III. set. In the mid-1760s, Wales contributed to The Ladies' Diary , an eighteenth century magazine comparable to the New Scientist of today. On September 5, 1765, he married Mary Green, sister of the astronomer Charles Green . They had two children together, Sarah (born 1767) and William (born 1768). In the same year, William Wales was hired as a calculator by Royal Astronomer Nevil Maskelyne . His task was the calculation of ephemeris, which should be used for Maskelyne's nautical yearbook to determine ship positions. After returning from his travels, he was hired as a Master of the Royal Mathematical School in the mathematics department of Christ's Hospital as a teacher and in 1776 was admitted to the Royal Society as a Fellow. Among Wales' students were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb. It is believed that Wales' records of his travels may have influenced Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner .

to travel

Venus transit 1769

Wales observed the Venus transit of 1769 in Hudson Bay , Canada. As part of the Royal Society 's plans to observe the Venus transit in order to define the astronomical unit (distance between the sun and earth) as closely as possible, Wales was investigated with an assistant, Joseph Dymond, sent to Canada. As a reward, if the expedition was successfully completed, both participants were promised an amount of 200 English pounds each. Other Royal Society expeditions related to the 1769 transit included Cook's voyage from 1768 to 1771, observing the same event from Tahiti, and the voyage of Jeremiah Dixon and William Bayly to Norway. Since a boat trip through the pack ice was not possible in winter, they had to start their journey in the summer of the previous year. They set sail on June 23, 1768 and reached their destination, Prince of Wales Fort , in August of that year. Interestingly, when Wales volunteered for the expedition, he asked to be sent to a friendlier destination. Since there was a lack of building material at the chosen location, the group not only had to bring the astronomical instruments with them, but also material for the construction of their accommodation. She spent about a month building the transportable observation facility developed by engineer John Smeaton and her home. Then she prepared for a long winter. On the day of the transit she was lucky with the weather, which allowed her to be observed around noon. To their surprise, they noticed a time difference of eleven seconds at the first contact (entry of the Venus disk into the sun). This caused Wales to withhold his report with the findings until March 1770 after his return. Ultimately, the report, which also contained climatic and botanical observations, was approved by the Royal Society, whereupon he was invited by James Cook to accompany him on the next expedition. After the observations, they stayed in Canada for another three months before starting their return journey. They were thus the first scientists who were stationed at Hudson Bay for one winter.

Cook's second circumnavigation

So he accompanied James Cook on his second expedition from 1772 to 1775 on the Resolution , in which he replaced the astronomer (and brother-in-law) Charles Green. Green had died of a fever on the return trip from Cook's first expedition. Wales' main job was to review Larcum Kendall's new K1 navigational chronograph , which was an exact replica of Harrison's H4. Until then, the determination of longitude on sea voyages was carried out by the watch of John Harrison . However, the accuracy of the clocks and thus also the method of determining the longitude by measuring time was questioned at that time, as there was no trust in the construction of modern (transportable) pocket watches. It should be noted that these “pocket watches” had a diameter of 13 cm and a weight of around 1.5 kg. The result, which Cook presented in his report after his return, was so outstanding that the precision of the watches - and their construction - as well as the navigation method were confirmed by the Board of Longitude .

Recognitions

During George Vancouver's voyage between 1791 and 1795, the latter named a cape at the entrance to Portland Inlet on the British Columbia coast in honor of his tutor William Wales after him (Wales Point). Vancouver was a cadet on Cook's second voyage on board the same ship as Wales and was introduced to astronomy and the method of determining longitude by measuring time. In the Vancouver logbook, he mentioned his gratitude and commitment to Wales for his "information that enabled me to traverse and record these lonely regions". Later a nearby island was also named Wales Island. When the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) archipelago was discovered 200 years ago, a stamp was issued in 1974 with a portrait of Wales. Discovered in 1998, asteroid 15045 (Walesdymond) was named after William Wales and Joseph Dymond. In addition, the Wales Head bears his name, a headland on the north coast of South Georgia in the South Atlantic. Since 2013 he has also given its name to Mount Wales on Bristol Island in the archipelago of the South Sandwich Islands.

Fonts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rita Griffin-Short: The Ancient Mariner and the Transit of Venus. ( online )
  2. ↑ James Cook - Scientist, Navigator and Explorer ( Memento September 18, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ From Transit of Venus to Teaching Navigation: the Work of William Wales ( online )
  4. ^ William Wales: Log book of HMS 'Resolution' . Cambridge Digital Library. Retrieved May 28, 2013.
  5. ↑ http://www.ianridpath.com/stamps/wales.htm William Wales on New Hebrides Stamp
  6. ↑ Asteroid 15045 (Walesdymond) NASA / JPL

swell

personal data
SURNAME Wales, William
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British astronomer
DATE OF BIRTH 1734
DATE OF DEATH December 29, 1798
Place of death London