Edmund Halley is a British astronomer and mathematician who was the first to calculate the orbit of a comet later named after him. He is also known for his role in the publication of “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” by Isaac Newton.
Early biography and family
Edmund Halley was born November 8, 1656 in Haggerston (London) in the family of a wealthy soap producer. Since childhood, he was interested in mathematics. Halley's education began at St. Paul's School in London. He was lucky to live in the period of the scientific revolution, which laid the foundation for modern thought. Halle was 4 when the monarchy was restored under Charles II. After 2 years, the new king granted the charter of an unofficial organization of natural philosophers, originally called the "invisible college." It was the Royal Society of London, an outstanding member of which Edmund Halley subsequently became. In 1673, he entered the Queens College of Oxford University and was introduced there to John Flemstead, who in 1676 was appointed the first Royal Astronomer. Once or twice he visited the Greenwich Observatory, in which Flemstead worked, and this influenced his decision to study astronomy.
Halley married Mary Took in 1682 and settled in Islington. The couple had three children.
Star catalog
Influenced by Flemstead’s work on using the telescope to compile an accurate catalog of northern stars, Edmund Halley suggested doing the same for the Southern Hemisphere. With the financial support of his father and after being introduced by the king of the East India Company in November 1676, he sailed on the ship of this company (leaving Oxford without a diploma) to St. Helena, the southernmost British property. Bad weather did not live up to his expectations. But by the time he returned home in January 1678, he recorded the celestial longitudes and latitudes of the 341st star, witnessed the transit of Mercury across the disk of the Sun, made repeated observations of the pendulum, and noticed that some stars apparently became weaker compared to the way the ancient astronomers described them. Halley's star catalog, published at the end of 1678, was the first publication of a telescopically determined location of southern stars and provided him with a reputation as an astronomer. In 1678, he was elected a member of the Royal Society and, at the request of the monarch, received a master's degree from Oxford University.
Explanation of planetary motion
Edmund Halley's biography was marked by a visit to Isaac Newton in Cambridge in 1684, and this event led to the fact that he played a significant role in the development of the theory of gravity. The scientist was the youngest of the 3 members of the Royal Society of London, which included inventor and microscope Robert Hooke and renowned architect Sir Christopher Wren. Together with Newton in Cambridge, they tried to find a mechanical explanation for planetary motion. The problem was to determine what forces keep the planet in its movement around the Sun so that it does not fly into space or fall into the sun. Since the scientific status of scientists was both a means of their existence and achievement of goals, each of them showed a personal interest in being the first to find a solution. This desire to be the first, the driving motive in science, was the reason for lively discussion and competition between them.
Role in Newton's Beginnings
Although Hooke and Halley believed that the force holding the planet in orbit should decrease inversely with the square of its distance from the Sun, they could not deduce from this hypothesis a theoretical orbit that would correspond to the observed planetary movements, despite the reward offered by Ren. When Edmund visited Newton, he told him that he had already solved the problem: the orbit would be an ellipse, but he lost his calculations to prove it.
Encouraged by Halley, Newton embodied his studies of celestial mechanics into one of the greatest masterpieces created by the human mind, "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy." The Royal Society decided that Edmond would take care of preparing the book for publication and print it at his own expense. He consulted with Newton, tactfully resolved the priority dispute with Hooke, edited the text of the work, wrote a poem in Latin that revered the author, corrected the evidence and published the work in 1687.
Halley's research
The British scientist had the ability to put large amounts of data in a significant order. In 1686, his map of the world with the distribution of the prevailing winds over the oceans became the first meteorological publication. His mortality tables for the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), published in 1693, included one of the earliest attempts to relate mortality to the age of a population. In the future, this led to the creation of actuarial tables in the field of life insurance.
In 1690, the Edmund Halley diving bell was built, in which atmospheric air was replenished from the surface with heavier barrels. During the demonstration, the scientist and 5 of his companions plunged 18 meters into the Thames and stayed there for more than an hour and a half. The bell was of little use for practical rescue operations, since it was very difficult, but over time, the scientist improved it, and then increased the time people spent under water by more than 4 times.
When the British decided to mint their devalued silver coins, Edmund Halley for 2 years served as controller of one of the country's five mints, which was located in Chester. So he could collaborate with Isaac Newton, who was accepted to the senior post of superintendent in 1696.
Scientific expedition
By order of the Admiralty in 1698-1700. he commanded the warship Paramore Pink on one of the first sea voyages undertaken solely for scientific purposes - to measure the declination (angle between magnetic and true north) of a compass in the South Atlantic and determine the exact coordinates of ports of call. In 1701, the results of studies by Edmund Halley - magnetic maps of the Atlantic and some parts of the Pacific Ocean - were published. They were compiled from the data of all available observations, supplemented by his own and were intended for navigation and, possibly, the solution of the big problem of determining longitude at sea. But since the declination of the compass was difficult to determine with sufficient accuracy, and because a change in declination over time was soon discovered, this method of geography was never widely used. Despite resistance from Flemstead, Halley was appointed Savilyan professor of geometry at Oxford in 1704.
Description of the orbits of comets
In 1705, Edmund Halley published The Code of Comet Astronomy. In it, the author described parabolic orbits - 24 of them, observed from 1337 to 1698. He showed that 3 historical comets were 1531, 1607 and 1682. were so similar in their characteristics that they must have been successive returns of one, now known as Halley's comet, and accurately predicted its return in 1758.
Innovator of observational astronomy
In 1716, Halley developed a method for observing the passage of Venus across the solar disk, predicted in 1761 and 1769, to accurately determine the solar parallax - the distance from the Earth from the Sun. In 1718, comparing the recently observed positions of the stars with the data recorded by the ancient Greek astronomer Ptolemy Almagest, he discovered that Sirius and Arcturus slightly changed their positions in relation to their neighbors. This was the discovery of what modern astronomers call their own movement. Edmund Halley incorrectly announced his own movements for two other stars, Aldebaran and Betelgeuse, but this was due to the mistakes of ancient astronomers. In 1720, he replaced Flemstead as royal astronomer in Greenwich, where he determined the time the moon passed through the meridian, which, he hoped, would be useful for determining longitude. In order to devote himself entirely to this work, he had to leave the post of secretary of the Royal Society. In 1729, Halley was elected a foreign member of the Royal Paris Academy of Sciences. Two years later, he published his work on determining longitude at sea using the position of the moon.
The British crown for serving as captain during expeditions to the Atlantic assigned him a pension, which in the following years ensured him a comfortable existence. At 80, he continued to conduct careful observations of the moon. The paralysis that struck Halley's hand spread over time, until he almost completely lost the ability to move. Apparently, this condition was the cause of his death at the age of 86 years. Halley was buried in the church of St. Margaritas in Lee in southeast London.
Scientist value
Halley's preoccupation with practical applications of science, such as navigation problems, reflects the influence of British author Francis Bacon on the Royal Society, who believed that science should bring relief to humanity. Despite the wide range of interests of Edmund Halley and his research, he showed a high degree of professional competence, which portended a scientific specialization. His wise participation in the appearance of Newton's work and his perseverance in bringing it to the end provided him an important place in the history of Western thought.
In addition to the comet, the name Halley named craters on the moon and on Mars, as well as the Antarctic research station.