Herschel, Sir John Frederick William

Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature by John W. Cousin

(1792-1871)


S. of Sir William H., the eminent astronomer and discoverer of the planet Uranus, was b. at Slough, and ed. at Camb., where he was Senior Wrangler and first Smith's prizeman. He became one of the greatest of English astronomers. Among his writings are treatises on Sound and Light, and his Astronomy (1831) was for long the leading manual on the subject. He also pub. Popular Lectures and Collected Addresses, and made translations from Schiller, and from the Iliad.

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