Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet

Sir John Herschel, 1st Baronet (born March 7, 1792, Slough, Buckinghamshire, England—died May 11, 1871, Collingwood, Kent) was an English astronomer and successor to his father, Sir William Herschel, in the field of stellar and nebular observation and discovery.

Early life

An only child, John was educated briefly at Eton and then privately. In 1809 he entered the University of Cambridge in the company of Charles Babbage, mathematician and inventor of the computer, and George Peacock, also a mathematician and later a theologian. In 1812 they founded the Analytical Society of Cambridge to introduce continental methods of mathematical calculus into English practice. They did so by replacing the cumbersome symbolism of Newton with the more efficient type invented by the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. John’s exceptional abilities were quickly recognized: in 1812 he submitted his first mathematical paper to the Royal Society, for which he was elected a fellow the following year. In 1813 he earned first place in the university mathematical examinations.

In 1814 John began to study for the bar in London, but he was not happy with his choice and discontinued his studies in the summer of 1815 when he became seriously ill; after convalescence he returned to Cambridge as a mathematics teacher. He left Cambridge again in 1816 to assist his renowned father in astronomical research. Through his work with his father, he gained the full benefit of the aged astronomer’s unrivaled experience in the construction and use of large telescopes. This apprenticeship laid the foundation of John’s subsequent achievements. In 1820 he was among the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society. In later years, John made important contributions to chemistry and the physics of light and particularly to mathematics, for which he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1821.

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Observation of double stars

John Herschel’s first major task in astronomy was the reobservation 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. John was fortunate to find in James South a collaborator who was able to afford the refined instruments best suited for this work. The catalog that they compiled between 1821 and 1823 and published in the Philosophical Transactions in 1824 earned them the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Lalande Prize in 1825 from the Paris Academy of Sciences. This work was their only joint undertaking.

Herschel served as secretary of the Royal Society in 1824–27. He married in 1829 and in 1831 he was knighted.

Voyage to the Southern Hemisphere

John Herschel’s sense of obligation to complete his father’s work in astronomy led him to consider a journey to the Southern Hemisphere to survey the skies not visible in England. In 1832 he began planning his expedition. The revision and extension of his father’s catalogs, which he carried out at Observatory House, beginning in 1825, was brought to completion and published in 1833. In November of that year, John and his family set sail for the Cape of Good Hope with a large reflecting telescope for observing faint nebulae, similar in size to William’s favourite instrument. He also possessed a refracting telescope for observing double stars.

The family established their home at Feldhausen, a Dutch farmhouse southeast of Cape Town. John spent four years of intense scientific activity, the clear southern skies allowing much more rapid progress in observing than was possible in England. When the family embarked for home in March of 1838, John had recorded the locations of 68,948 stars and had amassed long catalogs of nebulae and double stars. He had also described many details of the Great Nebula in the constellation Orion, as well as the Magellanic Clouds—actually two galaxies best viewed from the Southern Hemisphere—and had observed Halley’s Comet and the satellites of Saturn. In addition, his descriptions of sunspot activities and his measuring of solar radiation by means of a device he had invented contributed to the development of systematic studies of the Sun as an important part of astrophysics. Upon his return he was made a baronet (1838) and was lionized by the scientific world.

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Herschel was also a highly accomplished chemist. His discovery in 1819 of the solvent power of hyposulfite of soda on the otherwise insoluble salts of silver was the prelude to its use as a fixing agent in photography; and he invented in 1839, independently of Fox Talbot, the process of photography on sensitized paper. He was the first person to apply the now well-known terms “positive” and “negative” to photographic images, and to imprint them upon glass prepared by the deposit of a sensitive film.

During the 1840s Herschel worked on Outlines of Astronomy (1849), a book for educated laymen. This very successful science text went through many editions, including Arabic and Chinese. But 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 (1847). 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.

As a result of his seeking public office, Herschel at the end of 1850 was appointed master of the Mint. The strain of the work caused his health to deteriorate; he became depressed, and in 1854 he suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1856 he resigned his post at the Mint. He spent his remaining years working on the catalogs of double stars and of nebulae and star clusters.