Meet John Herschel, much less famous today than either his father or his aunt yet in his day he represented the very definition of what a scientist should be. In 1824, as the BRLSI began, he too was just starting out. On the 8 June, there will be a Conference dedicated to every aspect of the life & work of this great man, but for today let’s just get to know him. What did he do? Why should we care about him? What were his politics? What was his family life like? Come along on 3rd March and find out.
This introduction to John Herschel will prepare us for the all-day conference on Saturday 8th June 2024,
Emily Winterburn is one of the authors for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to John Herschel. She is also the author of a biography of John’s aunt, Caroline Herschel (The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel, 2017) and completed her PhD on the Herschel family in 2011. She is the former curator of astronomy at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Today she is a teacher and writer living in Leeds. She is also honorary vice president of the Society for the History of Astronomy.
Introduction to John Herschel
Emily Winterburn
organised by the Herschel Society, Bath
Hybrid, 3 April 2024 at 1930
Details here: http://herschelsociety.org.uk/2024/03/07/wednesday-3rd-april-2024-introduction-to-john-herschel/
Comments
The Herschels were an amazing family - so much so that Sir John Franklin (friend and fellow Arctic explorer of the Herschels' near neighbour, Edward Parry), named an island off the Yukon, in the Canadian Arctic, for them. There is also a photographic connection with William Herschel, as he was contacted in 1839 in hopes he could provide a camera for James Ross's Antarctic expedition. No trace has been found, however, of either camera or photographs relating to that voyage - otherwise we might have had photographs of icebergs almost 40 years before the famous ones taken during the Callenger expedition (see online).
3rd March or 3rd April?
3 April.