 |
 |
|
Biography of Edmund Halley
Name: Edmund Halley
Birth Date: November 8, 1656
Death Date: January 14, 1742
Place of Birth: Haggerston, England
Nationality: English
Gender: Male
Occupations: astronomer
Edmund Halley
The English astronomer Edmund Halley (1656-1742) studied the orbital movements of the moon and of comets and discovered the proper motion of the fixed stars.The son of a prosperous London soap-boiler, Edmund Halley was born on November 8, 1656, in Haggerston near London. He attended St. Paul's School, where he excelled in classics and mathematics and early developed an interest in astronomy. At the age of 16, when he entered Queen's College, Oxford, he was already an accomplished astronomical observer. He continued his observations at Oxford and, before he was 20, had sent to the Royal Society an explanation of an improved means of calculating planetary orbits.Recognizing the need for more accurate star charts, Halley, while still an undergraduate, proposed a plan for surveying the stars of the southern hemisphere as a supplement to the surveys then being made of the northern hemisphere by John Flamsteed and Johannes Hevelius. He left Oxford without …showed first 150 words…
You are viewing only a small portion of the biography.
Please login or register to access the full copy.
|
|
…showed last 150 words…positions and suggested that, if observed over sufficiently long periods, this proper motion might also be detected in other stars as well.Halley's knowledge and interests were extensive. He pursued such varied topics as the magnetic origin of the aurora borealis, the design and construction of diving bells, and the establishment of quantitatively accurate mortality tables. He continued his astronomical observations until a few months before his death on January 14, 1742. Further Reading Selections from Halley's correspondence and unpublished papers, together with two 18th-century biographical memoirs, are in Eugene Fairfield MacPike, ed., Correspondence and Papers of Edmund Halley (1932). The best biography of Halley is Angus Armitage, Edmund Halley (1966). Also useful is Colin A. Ronan, Edmund Halley: Genius in Eclipse (1969). For Halley's relations with contemporary astronomers see Eugene Fairfield MacPike, Hevelius, Flamsteed and Halley (1937).Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: A Longer View of Newton and Halley, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Need a custom written paper?
|
|
 |
|
