The Age of Wonder (95 page)

Herschel, Anna
(née
Moritzen; William’s mother), 65-6, 68-71, 80, 89

Herschel, Caroline (William’s sister): passion for astronomy, 60, 63-4, 66, 82; keeps journal, 64, 71-2; upbringing, 65-7, 70-1; feels Lisbon earthquake, 68, 383; on William’s return to Hanover from England, 69, 75-6; stunted and disfigured by ill health, 71, 75, 80-1; joins William in England, 80-2; singing lessons, 80-2, 89; relations with William, 82-3, 86, 89, 174, 176, 196, 403n; as William’s assistant and helpmeet, 85-6, 89, 95, 117-18; millinery business in Bath, 89, 95; solo singing, 90; on Watson’s meeting with Herschel, 93; and William’s discovery of Uranus, 95-8, 104; and successful trial of William’s telescope at Greenwich, 109-10; moves to Datchet with William, 111, 114; keeps visitors’ book at Datchet, 114; describes astronomical observations, 115-17; compiles index of William’s remarks on practical observation, 116-17; William trains for independent observation, 117; on hazards of astronomical observation, 119-20; injures leg, 120-1; William credits with discovering small ‘associate nebula’, 124; and construction of William’s forty-foot telescope, 163, 175; moves house to The Grove, Slough, 165, 165-6; and visitors to The Grove, 168-9; and William’s absence in Göttingen, 168-9; concentrates on astronomical work, 169-70; operates Newtonian reflector (’small sweeper’), 169-70; Observation Book, 170, 173; discovers and observes new comets, 171-4, 176, 188, 193; published in
Philosophical Transactions,
173; Fanny Burney visits, 175; large Newtonian sweeper telescope, 175; Maskelyne’s correspondence and friendship with, 175, 189, 193-5; reputation, 176, 193; on William’s single-mindedness, 176-7; secures royal stipend, 178-80, 384; and George III’s financial stipulations for telescope project, 180-1; affected by William’s courtship and marriage to Mary Pitt, 182-8; celebrates mounting of giant telescope, 182; destroys ten years of journals, 186-7; leaves Grove apartment for rooms in Slough, 188, 194-5; Lalande’s correspondence with, 189, 196; and dangers from forty-foot telescope, 191; astronomical achievements, 193; and birth of William’s son, 193; depicted in cartoon, 193; rides to visit Maskelyne in Greenwich, 193-4; confesses to loneliness, 195; on nebulae and galaxies, 196-7, 205, 208; Lalande praises, 201n; affection for nephew John, 202-3; imagination, 276; and nephew John’s career, 387, 389-90; assists nephew John in astronomical work, 406-7; cares for William in old age, 406-8; health problems, 407; returns to Hanover after William’s death, 409-11; awarded Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal, 410-11; recalculates new
Star Catalogue,
410; writes to nephew John, 410; fantasy on comet travelling, 426; lack of religious expression, 450; correspondence with John and family in South Africa, 462-4; public relations in old age, 463-4; ‘Book of Work Done’, 168, 171;
Memoirs,
64 & n, 68, 121, 195, 410;
Star Catalogue,
193-5

Herschel, Dietrich (William’s brother), 68, 71-2, 80

Herschel, Isaac (William’s father), 64-6, 68-71, 75-6

Herschel, Jacob (William’s brother), 65-71, 75-7, 79-80, 89, 166-7

Herschel, Sir John (William’s son): names Uranus’s moons, 102n; birth, 193; on solar system and nebulae theory, 198; in Paris as boy, 201; aunt Caroline’s devotion to, 202-3; Brighton holiday with father, 209; excels at Cambridge, 381-2; and founding of Astronomical Society, 384; career, 387-90; misgivings over Davy’s character, 397-8, 402; supports Wollaston for presidency of Royal Society, 397-8; awarded Copley Medals, 399-400, 464; Davy acknowledges in presidential speech to Royal Society, 399; Continental tour with Babbage, 405-6; Davy recommends for Athenaeum club, 405; favours women in science, 407; composes epitaph to father, 408; and Caroline’s return to Hanover, 409-11; Caroline sends
Memoirs
to in instalments, 410; contributes papers to Royal Society, 410; correspondence with Caroline, 410, 462-5; Davy appoints Secretary at Royal Society, 413; refers to Davy’s
Consolations in Travel,
430, 455; candidacy for presidency of Royal Society (1829), 436-7; marriage and family, 436, 461; knighted, 437; investigates Fraunhofer’s lines on spectrum, 440; in debate on state of British science, 441-5; literary qualities, 442; attends British Association meetings, 447; Mary Somerville writes on, 458; search for unifying laws, 458; astronomical expedition to southern hemisphere (Cape Town), 461-5; Charles Darwin studies, 461; wealth from inheritances, 462; busy life, 463; reportedly discovers life on moon, 464-6; baronetcy and election to presidency of Royal Society, 465; portrait photograph, 465; achievements, 468;
A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy,
441-5, 448, 461

Herschel, Margaret Brodie, Lady
(née
Stewart; John’s wife), 46n, 64n, 186-7, 436, 447, 462-5

Herschel, Mary, Lady
(earlier
Pitt;
née
Baldwin), 165, 182-6, 389, 409, 462

Herschel, Sophie (William’s sister), 65-6, 76

Herschel, Sir William: discoveries and theories, xx, 63-4, 88, 90-1, 93; in Bath, 60, 75-7, 80, 95; constructs own telescopes, 60, 63, 83-7, 94; musicianship, 60, 67 & n, 72, 75-7, 89-90, 115, 188; self-taught astronomy, 60-1, 74, 77; Watson meets, 60-1, 92-3; background and family, 61, 63-7; studies and speculations on moon, 61-3, 87, 92-5; character and temperament, 65, 209-10; practical skills, 66, 87; serves in Hanoverian army, 67-70; moves to England, 68-70, 72-4; discharged from army, 71; linguistic skills, 72, 75; revisits Hanover, 72, 75-6; philosophical and religious reflections, 73; appearance, 75; Astronomical Observation Journal, 77, 87-8, 94, 96-7; brings Caroline to England, 80-2; relations with Caroline, 82-3, 86, 89, 120, 174, 196, 403n; Caroline assists, 85-6, 117-18; and double stars, 87, 90, 95; on nebulae and galaxies, 88, 123, 192-3, 196-8, 205, 208-9; membership of Bath Philosophical Society, 93; reading of night sky, 95, 115-16; discovers new planet (Uranus), 96-103, 208; meets British astronomers in London, 101-2; elected to Royal Society and awarded Copley Gold Medal, 102-3, 105; denies accidental discovery of Uranus, 103-4, 108, 367; correspondence with European astronomers about metal specula, 107-8; power of telescopes doubted, 108-9; summoned to meet George III, 109-10; telescope tried and proved at Greenwich, 109-10; appointed King’s Personal Astronomer, 111; commercial manufacture of reflector telescopes, 114; on physics and psychology of night observation, 115-16; ‘sweeping’ method, 115, 118, 120; and hazards of observation, 119-20; writes on celestial system and universe, 121-4, 191-2, 197-8, 204-5, 209-10, 391; catalogue of nebulae, 123, 176; interest in balloons, 135-6; proposes and builds forty- foot telescope, 163, 175-7, 181-2; moves to The Grove, Slough, 165-7; absence installing telescope in Göttingen, 167-8; and Caroline’s celebrity for discovering comet, 174; publishes papers with Royal Society, 176; single-mindedness, 176-7; requests and secures royal stipend for Caroline, 178-9; account book for telescope project, 180; and George III’s financial stipulations for telescope project, 180-1; knighthood, 181; personal finances, 181; courtship and marriage to Mary Pitt, 182-7; and operation of forty-foot telescope, 190; theoretical work, 191, 208; birth of son John, 193; domestic and married life, 193; discovers infra-red light, 199, 328; interest in extraterrestrial life, 199; studies sun, 199, 391; commissioned by War Office to provide spy telescope, 200; meets Napoleon in Paris, 200-1; on philosophical significance of astronomy, 203; on Time, 203-5; on objective observation, 249n; Davy cites, 288; in Walker’s composite portrait, 303; Keats on, 306-8, 323; Jane Apreece dines with, 340; isolation from Banks, 381; disagreement with son over career, 387-90; influence on Shelley, 390-1; reputation, 390, 399, 438; decline and death, 405, 407-8, 435; obituaries, 408-9; Davy writes on ideas of ever-evolving universe, 430; religious scepticism, 450; Brewster summarises work in life of Newton, 456; Mary Somerville writes on, 458; will and bequests to son, 462; ‘An Account of a Comet’, 100; ‘Astronomic Observations Relating to the Sidereal Path of the Heavens’, 208, 407; ‘Astronomical Observations Relating to the Construction of the Heavens’, 204; ‘Catalogue of Second Thousand Nebulae with Remarks on the Construction of the Heavens’, 191, 204; ‘The Description of a Forty Foot Reflecting Telescope’, 196; ‘An Investigation of the Construction of the Heavens’, 122; ‘Observations tending to investigate the Nature of the Sun’, 204; ‘On the Construction of the Heavens’, 122, 191, 197, 204; ‘On the Nature and Construction of the Sun’, 199; ‘On Nebulae Stars, Properly So-called’, 196-7; ‘On the Proper Motion of the Solar System’, 204; ‘One Thousand New Nebulae’, 118;
Scientific Papers,
64n; ‘A Series of Observations on the Georgian Planet’, 191; ‘A Third Catalogue of the Comparative Brightness of Stars’, 196

Herschel-Shorland, John, 64n

Hicks, Zachary, 40

Hodgson, Revd John, 351

Holmes, J.H., 372

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 190

Holmes, Richard: lectures at Royal Institution, 467;
Shelley: The Pursuit,
121n

Home, Sir Everard, 7-8

Homer:
Iliad,
206-7

Hooke, Robert:
Micrographia,
249n

Hornemann, Friedrich, 212, 233

horse-dung: used for casting metal mirrors, 84 & n

Hoskin, Michael, 94n;
Caroline Herschel’s Autobiographies,
64n

Houghton, Major Daniel, 212, 216

Household Words
(magazine), 454

Houssa (mythical city), 220

Houssa (West African people), 228

Howard, Luke:
Barometrographia,
160;
On the Modification of Clouds,
159

Hubble, Edwin, 84n, 88, 90, 119n, 403n;
The Realm of the Nebulae,
205n

Hubble Telescope, 135

Humboldt, Alexander von, 43n, 232n, 310, 324, 370, 406, 439-40, 447, 458;
Personal Narrative,
406, 445, 461

Hunt, Leigh, 353, 404

Hunter, John, 51, 308-9, 316, 320

Hunterian Collection, 307; Hunterian Museum, London, 309

Hunterian Orations, 308

Hutton, James, 104, 208, 294, 356, 455

Huygens, Christiaan, 77, 83, 93, 167, 200, 324

hydrogen: discovered, 127-8; in balloons, 131, 144, 146, 158; cheap production method, 156

Hypatia of Alexandria, 201n, 248

Iceland: Banks visits, 47, 54, 121n

Illyria, 377-8, 419, 421, 428, 432

Inchbald, Elizabeth:
A Magical Tale, or the Descent of the Balloon
(play), 143

infra-red light, 199, 328

inoculation, 50

Institut de France: awards Prix Napoléon to Davy, 352

iodine, 354, 373

Ireland: attempted balloon crossing to England from, 157-8

Italy: Davy visits with Jane, 355, 377-8; Romantic wanderers in, 425

J, Miss (of Bristol), 263

Jackson’s Oxford Journal,
144

James, Frank A.J.L.: ‘How Big is a Hole?’, 373n

Jardine, Lisa, 429n;
Ingenious Pursuits,
xvin

Jefferson, Thomas, 168n

Jeffries, Dr John, 147-52, 155, 159, 381;
Narrative of Two Aerial Voyages with M. Blanchard,
150

Jena, University of, 310, 315, 328-9

Jenner, Edward, 50, 249n, 285, 303

Jermyn, Paulina, 460n

John Bull
(journal), 413, 453

Johnson (Park’s African guide), 215

Johnson, Joseph (publisher), 106, 271

Johnson, Samuel: on purpose of Grand Tour, 12; meets Banks, 43; Hawkesworth collaborates with, 44; Omai meets, 50; sends Susannah Thrale to visit Herschel, 114; on balloons and ballooning, 134, 140-1, 145;
Rasselas,
134

Joliba,
HMS, 228 & n

Journal de Paris,
129

Journal de Physique,
354

Kalamia, West Africa, 218

Kant, Immanuel, 66, 91, 123, 203-4;
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,
91, 106

Karloff, Boris, 334

Keats, John: given Bonnycastle’s
Introduction to Astronomy,
113, 206; plays astronomy game at school, 113; Nile sonnets, 233; and Davy’s poetry, 276; studies under Astley Cooper, 307, 323; at Haydon’s ‘Immortal Dinner’, 318-19; in Haydon painting, 319; on Newton, 319; meets Coleridge, 321-2; trains at Guy’s Hospital, 321, 323; Anatomical and Physiological Notebook, 323; attack on science, 323-5; on creation of life, 331; inspired by Egyptian statuary at British Museum, 404;
Endymion,
234; ‘Lamia’, 323-5; ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’, 206-8, 323

Kepler, Johannes, 77, 106

Kerr, Charles, 337

Kew: Banks’s improvements at, 56

Killingworth mine, Northumberland, 371

King, Dr John, 279, 281, 287, 293

Kinglake, Dr Robert, 257, 259, 261, 269-70

Kingsborough, George King, Viscount
(later
3rd Earl of Kingston), 179

Klug, Sir Aaron, 429n

Lackington, Allen & Co. (publishers), 327

Laibach (now Ljubljana), 377, 419, 421-2

Laidley, Dr John, 215-16

Lake Poets, 318

Lalande, Jérôme, 101-3, 188-9, 196, 200-1;
Traité d’Astronomie,
198;
Astronomie des Dames
(tr. as
Astronomy for Ladies),
201n

Lamarck, Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de: ‘On Cloud Forms’, 160n

Lamb, Charles: Coleridge lives with, 267; at Haydon’s ‘Immortal Dinner’, 318; on Newton, 319

Lamb, Mary, 267

Lambton, John George, Viscount
(later
1st Earl of Durham), 373-4

Lambton, William Henry, 252

La Mettrie, Julien de, 312

Lander, Richard, 230-1

Lansdowne (Bristol surgeon), 284

Laplace, Pierre, 102, 192, 198, 200-1, 204, 210, 391, 396, 458;
Mécanique Céleste,
198, 454, 458;
Système du Monde,
198

Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia,
441

La Roche, Sophie von, 175

Larrey, Dominique, 305-6

Lavoisier, Antoine: experiments on hydrogen, 127-8; and manufacture of hydrogen, 156; guillotined, 239, 248; writings, 242; experiments on combustion, 245, 247; advocates scientific observation, 248-9; eminence and influence as chemist, 248, 254; Beddoes praises, 251; Davy praises, 344-5; acknowledges Bacon, 371;
Traité Élémentaire de chimie,
236, 244, 148