Herschel

John Frederick William Herschel

Born: 7 March 1792 in Slough, Buckinghamshire, England
Died: 11 May 1871 in Hawkhurst, Kent, England

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John Herschel was the son of William Herschel, the astronomer who discovered Uranus. As an undergraduate John Herschel went to Cambridge and made friends with Peacock and Babbage. Together the three founded the Analytical Society which had as its aim the introduction of Continental methods of analysis into British universities.

Herschel, with Peacock, translated Lacroix's Traité du calcul différentiel et du calcul intégral and, with Babbage, he published a 2 volume work on finite differences. In the final examination Herschel was first, Peacock second and Babbage had withdrawn because he could not compete.

Herschel's later work went, as the other members of his family, towards astronomy but he did some important work on geometric optics.

References elsewhere in this archive:

Tell me about Herschel's work on orbits and gravitation

References:

  1. Dictionary of Scientific Biography
  2. Biography in Encyclopaedia Britannica
  3. G Buttmann, The Shadow of the Telescope : a biography of John Herschel (New York, 1970).
  4. A M Clerke, The Herschels and Modern Astronomy (1895).
  5. H Macpherson, Herschel (1919).
  6. M V Wilkes, Herschel, Peacock, Babbage and the development of the Cambridge curriculum, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 44 (1990), 205-219.
  7. C A Ronan, John Herschel (1792-1871), Endeavour 16 (1992), 178-181. 
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JOC/EFR February 1996