Born March 7, 1792 in Slough, Buckinghamshire, Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet He was an English astronomer, successor to his father, Sir William Herschel, in the field of stellar and nebular observation and discovery.
In 1814 he began to study law, but not being happy with his choice, he suspended his studies in the summer of 1815 when he became seriously ill; after convalescence he returned to Cambridge as professor of mathematics. He left Cambridge again in 1816 to help his renowned father in astronomical research. Through working with his father, he derived the full benefit of the elderly astronomer’s unparalleled experience in building and using large telescopes. This learning laid the foundation for his later achievements. In 1820 he was one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society. In later years he made important contributions to the chemistry and physics of light and, in particular, to mathematics, for which he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1821.
The first important task of John herschel in astronomy it was the re-observation of the double stars cataloged by his father. The motions of these pairs of stars relative to each other offer the best hope of investigating the gravitational forces operating in the universe. He was lucky to find in James South a collaborator who could handle the most refined and suitable instruments for this work. The catalog that they compiled between 1821 and 1823 and published in Philosophical Transactions in 1824 they were awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Lalande Prize in 1825 from the Paris Academy of Sciences. This job was their only joint venture.
Herschel he was secretary of the Royal Society in the period 1824–27. He married in 1829 and was knighted in 1831.
The sense of obligation to John herschel Completing his father’s astronomy work led him to consider a trip to the southern hemisphere to study the unseen skies in England. In 1832 he began planning his expedition. The revision and extension of his father’s catalogs, which he carried out at the Observatory House, beginning in 1825, was completed 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 to observe faint nebulae, similar in size to William’s favorite instrument. It also possessed a refracting telescope for observing double stars.
The family made their home in Feldhausen, a Dutch farm southeast of Cape Town. John spent four years of intense scientific activity, the clear southern skies allowed much faster progress in observation than was possible in England. When the family sailed home in March 1838, John it had recorded the locations of 68,948 stars and had accumulated 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 seen from the southern hemisphere, and had observed Halley’s Comet and the satellites of Saturn. Using a device he had invented, he 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 became the star of the scientific world.
Herschel he was also a highly accomplished chemist. His discovery in 1819 of the solvent power of sodium hyposulfite in insoluble silver salts was the prelude to its use as a fixing agent in photography; and invented in 1839, independently of Fox Talbot, the process of sensitized paper photography. He was the first person to apply the familiar terms “positive” and “negative” to photographic images, and to print them on glass prepared with the deposit of a sensitive film.
During the 1840s, Herschel I work in Outlines of Astronomy (1849), a book for educated laymen. This very successful scientific text went through many editions, including Arabic and Chinese. But most of his time was occupied with the results of astronomical observations, made during the years 1834-1838 at the Cape of Good Hope (1847). This work contains catalogs and tables of southern sky nebulae and star clusters, a catalog of the relative positions and magnitudes of the southern double stars, and his observations on the variations and relative brightness of the stars.
As a result of his search for public office, in the late 1850s Herschel he was appointed master of the Casa de la Moneda. The stress of work caused his health to deteriorate; he became depressed and in 1854 suffered a nervous breakdown. In 1856 he resigned his position at the Casa de la Moneda. He spent the remaining years working on the catalogs of double stars and of nebulae and star clusters.