Paradigm, Number 9 (December, 1992)

 John Herschel’s father, William Herschel, was discoverer of the planet Uranus, maker of the largest and best telescopes of his day, and Europe’s foremost practical astronomer. John Herschel was equally famous, but as his interests spread far wider than his father’s, including mathematics, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, meteorology and education, as well as music, languages and poetry, and public service and philanthropy, he did not tower over his contemporaries in astronomy as William Herschel had done. This note is concerned with John Herschel’s writings and his influence on scholarship, rather than with his scientific and other discoveries.

As a mathematics undergraduate at Cambridge he realised how backward was British mathematics, and together with George Peacock and Charles Babbage founded the Analytical Society in 1812 to convert Britain to the use of modern continental mathematical practices. As part of this campaign they translated and annotated Lacroix’s treatise on the calculus, ¹ and supplemented this with a collection of examples. ² The campaign was a success: the translation of Lacroix was soon adopted as a university textbook, and as early as 1817 Cambridge Tripos papers contained questions using the continental notation advocated by Herschel and his friends.

The first of Herschel’s many papers published by the Royal Society was in 1812, when he was an undergraduate aged 20. Most of these were on mathematical or astronomical subjects, although those which were probably the more important had a chemical subject, establishing much of the scientific basis and many of the terms of photography. Herschel had discovered the main principles of photography, (the first, in 1819, that sodium thiosulphate would dissolve silver salts), independently of Fox Talbot, to whom he gave much private help. ³

Britain was slower than the continent to accept the wave theory of light, holding for too long to Newton’s corpuscular theory. Thomas Young’s advocacy of the wave theory was not generally accepted until Herschel’s long article on Light in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana ⁴ which covered all aspects of the subject, including both wave and corpuscular theories. Herschel also wrote similar articles on Physical Astronomy and on Sound for the same encyclopaedia.

One of the most influential books on the philosophy of science, serving as an inspiration to Charles Darwin and many others, was Herschel’s introduction to the subject, written for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. ⁵ This was later published as a volume in its own right.

The standard textbook on astronomy during the second half of the nineteenth century was Herschel’s Outlines of Astronomy. ⁶ This was an enlargement of a second volume that Herschel wrote for the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. ⁷.Despite the technical and mathematical treatment of many of its topics, this was an enormous success, running to twelve editions in England, and more abroad, where it was translated into many European languages as well as Arabic and Chinese. In the Edinburgh Encyclopaedia published in 1830, Herschel wrote articles on the history of mathematics and on the isoperimetric problem.

Herschel contributed to public life. He was one of the founders of The Astronomical Society (later the Royal Astronomical Society) and three times its President, had much to do with the Nautical Almanac, was to a large extent responsible for the establishment by the Colonial Office of a state system of school education in South Africa, was President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, edited a manual for the Royal Navy, ⁸ and for five years was Master of the Mint.

Herschel’s articles in the 8th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1859) on Meteorology, Physical Geography, and Telescopes were also influential. These were all later printed separately. ⁹

Not a textbook, though widely read, was a collection of scientific lectures and articles, the lectures first given in the schoolhouse of the parish of Hawkhurst, in Kent, and these and many of the articles first published in Good Words. 10 By now Herschel was a famous man, honoured by the crown, courted by the great, and revered by the many readers whom he both instructed and inspired.

Herschel’s main scientific publications were astronomical, most notably reporting on his four years’ work in South Africa 11 where he catalogued some 70,000 stars and some thousands of nebulae and double stars, as well as his continuation of his father’s work on stars, nebulae and double stars in the northern skies.

References

1. S. F Lacroix, An elementary treatise on the differential and integral calculus ... translated from the French. With an appendix and notes (Cambridge: J Deighton and Sons. 1816).

2. G. Peacock, J. F. W. Herschel, C. Babbage, A Collection of examples of the applications of the differential and integral calculus (one vol in 4 parts, Cambridge: J. Deighton, 1820).

3. J. F. W. Herschel, ‘On the chemical action of the rays of the solar spectrum on preparations of silver and other substances, both metallic and non-metallic, and on some photographic processes’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 1840, pp. 1-59.

4. J. F. W. Herschel, ‘Light’, Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, vol. 4 (London, 1828), pp, 341-586.

5. J. F. W. Herschel, ‘A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy’ The Cabinet Cyclopaedia, vol 1 (Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, and John Taylor, 1830).

6. J. F. W. Herschel, Outlines of astronomy (Longman, Brown, Green, and Longman, and John Taylor, 1849).

7. J. F. W. Herschel, A Treatise on astronomy (Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, and John Taylor, 1833).

8. J. F. W. Herschel, ed. A manual of scientific enquiry, prepared for the use of Her Majesty’s Navy. and adapted for travellers in general (Murray, 1849.

9. J. F. W. Herschel, Meteorology (Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1861). Companion volumes on Physical geography and The Telescope were published In the same year.

10. J. F. W. Herschel, Familiar Lectures on Scientific Subjects (London and New York: Alexander Strahan, 1866). Review In Good Words, 1st February, 1866.

11. J. F. W. Herschel, Results of astronomical observations made during the years 1834, 5, 6, 7, 8, at the Cape of Good Hope, being the completion of the visible heavens, commenced in 1825, by Sir John F. W. Herschel (Smith, Elder, 1847).

[Based on a paper given at the Eton Colloquium. Ed.]

 

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