42-409: John Flamsteed FRS (19 August 1646 – 31 December 1719) was an English astronomer and the first Astronomer Royal . His main achievements were the preparation of a 3,000-star catalogue, Catalogus Britannicus , and a star atlas called Atlas Coelestis , both published posthumously. He also made the first recorded observations of Uranus , although he mistakenly catalogued it as a star, and he laid
84-763: A Chair (all of whom are Fellows of the Royal Society ). Members of the 10 Sectional Committees change every three years to mitigate in-group bias . Each Sectional Committee covers different specialist areas including: New Fellows are admitted to the Society at a formal admissions day ceremony held annually in July, when they sign the Charter Book and the Obligation which reads: "We who have hereunto subscribed, do hereby promise, that we will endeavour to promote
126-792: A company in the Admiral's Regiment (1666), Privy Councillor (1688), Commissioner for Trade and Plantations (1688–1674), Conservator of the Bedford Level (1679-death), deputy-lieutenant of Hertfordshire (1680–1681, 1687–1689, 1701-death) and Commissioner for Inquiry into Recusancy Fines (1687). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in January 1669. When he died in 1704, Titus was buried at Bushey . He had married c. 1645 Katherine, daughter of James Winstanley, Counsellor-at-law, of Gray's Inn and Braunstone, Leicestershire. Captain Titus
168-457: A humor that rendered them effective. For instance, when it was complained that Titus made sport of the House of Commons of England , he retorted that "things were not necessarily serious because they were dull". Once again, when Charles II offered to impose limitations on a Roman Catholic Church sovereign rather than exclude his brother from the throne, Titus likened such a plan to "having a lion in
210-751: A man by the real name of William Allen. These attributions are usually unfounded as King Charles II awarded Titus the title of Groom of the Bedchamber for his service in authoring the work. Silius Titus first took up arms for the Parliament. Although he was a strong Presbyterian Titus became an ardent Royalist devoted to Charles I and King Charles II . He became a member of parliament, successively representing Ludgershall (1660), Lostwithiel (1670–1678), Hertfordshire (1678–1679), Huntingdonshire (1679–1685) and Ludlow (1691–1695). Though not eloquent, he would often illustrate his speeches with
252-503: A solid knowledge of Latin , essential for reading the scientific literature of the day, and a love of history , leaving the school in May 1662. His progress to Jesus College, Cambridge , recommended by the Master of Derby School, was delayed by some years of chronic ill health. During those years, Flamsteed gave his father some help in his business, and from his father learnt arithmetic and
294-644: Is buryed in the Chancell of Burstow Church". She also left instructions, and twenty five pounds, for the executor of her will to place "in the aforesaid Chancell of Burstow … A Marble stone or Monument, with an inscription in Latin, in memory of the late Reverend Mr. John Flamsteed". It seems no such monument was created, and almost 200 years later, a plaque was placed to mark his burial in the chancel. After his death, his papers and scientific instruments were taken by his widow. The papers were returned many years later, but
336-688: Is confirmed by the Council in April, and a secret ballot of Fellows is held at a meeting in May. A candidate is elected if they secure two-thirds of votes of those Fellows voting. An indicative allocation of 18 Fellowships can be allocated to candidates from Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences; and up to 10 from Applied Sciences, Human Sciences and Joint Physical and Biological Sciences. A further maximum of six can be 'Honorary', 'General' or 'Royal' Fellows. Nominations for Fellowship are peer reviewed by Sectional Committees, each with at least 12 members and
378-421: Is nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society (a proposer and a seconder), who sign a certificate of proposal. Previously, nominations required at least five fellows to support each nomination by the proposer, which was criticised for supposedly establishing an old boy network and elitist gentlemen's club . The certificate of election (see for example ) includes a statement of the principal grounds on which
420-643: The Tower of London , Flamsteed had the opportunity to be taken by Titus to meet the King. He was subsequently admitted as an official Assistant to the Royal Commission and supplied observations in order to test St Pierre's proposal and to offer his own comments. The commission's conclusions were that, although St Pierre's proposal was not worth further consideration, the King should consider establishing an observatory and appointing an observer in order to better map
462-426: The post-nominal letters FRS . Every year, fellows elect up to ten new foreign members. Like fellows, foreign members are elected for life through peer review on the basis of excellence in science. As of 2016 , there are around 165 foreign members, who are entitled to use the post-nominal ForMemRS . Honorary Fellowship is an honorary academic title awarded to candidates who have given distinguished service to
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#1732779979779504-1828: The Royal Society ( FRS , ForMemRS and HonFRS ) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge , including mathematics , engineering science , and medical science ". Fellowship of the Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to many eminent scientists throughout history, including Isaac Newton (1672), Benjamin Franklin (1756), Charles Babbage (1816), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Jagadish Chandra Bose (1920), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Winston Churchill (1941), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1945), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955), Satyendra Nath Bose (1958), and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking (1974), David Attenborough (1983), Tim Hunt (1991), Elizabeth Blackburn (1992), Raghunath Mashelkar (1998), Tim Berners-Lee (2001), Venki Ramakrishnan (2003), Atta-ur-Rahman (2006), Andre Geim (2007), Bai Chunli (2014), James Dyson (2015), Ajay Kumar Sood (2015), Subhash Khot (2017), Elon Musk (2018), Elaine Fuchs (2019) and around 8,000 others in total, including over 280 Nobel Laureates since 1900. As of October 2018 , there are approximately 1,689 living Fellows, Foreign and Honorary Members, of whom 85 are Nobel Laureates. Fellowship of
546-439: The Royal Society has been described by The Guardian as "the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar " with several institutions celebrating their announcement each year. Up to 60 new Fellows (FRS), honorary (HonFRS) and foreign members (ForMemRS) are elected annually in late April or early May, from a pool of around 700 proposed candidates each year. New Fellows can only be nominated by existing Fellows for one of
588-663: The Society, we shall be free from this Obligation for the future". Since 2014, portraits of Fellows at the admissions ceremony have been published without copyright restrictions in Wikimedia Commons under a more permissive Creative Commons license which allows wider re-use. In addition to the main fellowships of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS & HonFRS), other fellowships are available which are applied for by individuals, rather than through election. These fellowships are research grant awards and holders are known as Royal Society Research Fellows . In addition to
630-605: The Sun in large, closed elliptical orbits. Flamsteed later learned that Newton had gained access to his observations and data through Edmond Halley , his former assistant with whom he previously had a cordial relationship. As Astronomer Royal, Flamsteed spent some forty years observing and making meticulous records for his star catalogue, which would eventually triple the number of entries in Tycho Brahe 's sky atlas. Unwilling to risk his reputation by releasing unverified data, he kept
672-537: The award of Fellowship (FRS, HonFRS & ForMemRS) and the Research Fellowships described above, several other awards, lectures and medals of the Royal Society are also given. Silius Titus Silius Titus (1623 – 16 December 1704), of Bushey , was an English politician, Captain of Deal Castle , and Groom of the Bedchamber to King Charles II . Titus was an organizer in the attempted escape of King Charles I from Carisbrooke Castle . He
714-612: The cause of science, but do not have the kind of scientific achievements required of Fellows or Foreign Members. Honorary Fellows include the World Health Organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (2022), Bill Bryson (2013), Melvyn Bragg (2010), Robin Saxby (2015), David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville (2008), Onora O'Neill (2007), John Maddox (2000), Patrick Moore (2001) and Lisa Jardine (2015). Honorary Fellows are entitled to use
756-549: The danger involved in writing such a politically charged opinion against the Protector, Killing No Murder was published under the pseudonym 'William Allen'. Cromwell was said to have been so disturbed after the publication of Killing No Murder that he never spent more than two nights in the same place and always took extreme precaution in planning his travel. Titus's authorship of this pamphlet has been disputed in some circles; it has also been attributed to Edward Sexby , or
798-544: The distance to Mars and hence the astronomical unit . To this end, Flamsteed compared the apparent shift of Mars during the night with respect to other stars, this shift being superimposed on Mars' apparent night-to-night course among the stars. On 16 August 1680 Flamsteed catalogued a star, 3 Cassiopeiae , that later astronomers were unable to corroborate. Three hundred years later, the American astronomical historian William Ashworth suggested that what Flamsteed may have seen
840-528: The fellowships described below: Every year, up to 52 new fellows are elected from the United Kingdom, the rest of the Commonwealth of Nations , and Ireland, which make up around 90% of the society. Each candidate is considered on their merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use
882-604: The fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired Longitude of places for Perfecteing the Art of Navigation". In June 1675, another royal warrant provided for the founding of the Royal Greenwich Observatory , and Flamsteed laid the foundation stone on 10 August. In February 1676, he was admitted a Fellow of the Royal Society , and in July, he moved into the Observatory where he lived until 1684, when he
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#1732779979779924-519: The foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory . Flamsteed was born in Denby , Derbyshire , England, the only son of Stephen Flamsteed and his first wife, Mary Spadman. He was educated at the free school of Derby and at Derby School , in St Peter's Churchyard, Derby , near where his father carried on a malting business . At that time, most masters of the school were Puritans . Flamsteed had
966-540: The good of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and to pursue the ends for which the same was founded; that we will carry out, as far as we are able, those actions requested of us in the name of the Council; and that we will observe the Statutes and Standing Orders of the said Society. Provided that, whensoever any of us shall signify to the President under our hands, that we desire to withdraw from
1008-442: The incomplete records under seal at Greenwich. In 1712, Isaac Newton , then President of the Royal Society , and Edmond Halley again obtained Flamsteed's data and published a pirated star catalogue. Flamsteed managed to gather three hundred of the four hundred printings and burned them. "If Sir I.N. would be sensible of it, I have done both him and Dr. Halley a great kindness," he wrote to his assistant Abraham Sharp . The data from
1050-639: The instruments disappeared. Flamsteed accurately calculated the solar eclipses of 1666 and 1668. He was responsible for several of the earliest recorded sightings of the planet Uranus , which he mistook for a star and catalogued as '34 Tauri'. The first of these was in December 1690, which remains the earliest known sighting of Uranus by an astronomer. In October 1672, when Mars was in opposition , Flamsteed used eyepieces with illuminated micrometer reticle carrying double cross-hairs, to measure Mars' diurnal parallax , thus allowing Flamsteed to estimate
1092-696: The lobby and then voting to secure ourselves by letting him in and chaining him, rather than by keeping him out". Titus also served King James II but later transferred his allegiance to William III . During his life he held a number of royal appointments: Keeper of Deal Castle (1661–1669), Colonel of the Cinque Ports Militia (1661–1669), Commissioner for Assessment for Middlesex (1661–1663), for Kent (1664–1669), for Leicestershire (1673–1679), for Hertfordshire (1673–1680), and for Huntingdonshire (1677–1680), assistant, Royal Adventurers into Africa (1663), assistant, Royal Fishing Company (1664), captain of
1134-471: The pirated catalogue were used by the London cartographer John Senex to produce star charts in the 1720s before Flamsteed's own charts were ready. In 1725 Flamsteed's own version of Historia Coelestis Britannica was published posthumously, edited by his wife, Margaret Flamsteed . This contained Flamsteed's observations, and included a catalogue of 2,935 stars to much greater accuracy than any prior work. It
1176-514: The post nominal letters HonFRS . Statute 12 is a legacy mechanism for electing members before official honorary membership existed in 1997. Fellows elected under statute 12 include David Attenborough (1983) and John Palmer, 4th Earl of Selborne (1991). The Council of the Royal Society can recommend members of the British royal family for election as Royal Fellow of the Royal Society . As of 2023 there are four royal fellows: Elizabeth II
1218-552: The proposal is being made. There is no limit on the number of nominations made each year. In 2015, there were 654 candidates for election as Fellows and 106 candidates for Foreign Membership. The Council of the Royal Society oversees the selection process and appoints 10 subject area committees, known as Sectional Committees, to recommend the strongest candidates for election to the Fellowship. The final list of up to 52 Fellowship candidates and up to 10 Foreign Membership candidates
1260-477: The same time, he acquired Thomas Street 's Astronomia Carolina, or A New Theory of the Celestial Motions ( Caroline Tables ). He associated himself with local gentlemen interested in astronomy, including William Litchford, whose library included the work of the astrologer John Gadbury which included astronomical tables by Jeremiah Horrocks , who had died in 1641 at the age of twenty-two. Flamsteed
1302-571: The stars and the motions of the Moon in order to underpin the successful development of the lunar-distance method of finding longitude. On 4 March 1675 Flamsteed was appointed by royal warrant "The King's Astronomical Observator" – the first English Astronomer Royal , with an allowance of £100 a year. The warrant stated his task as "rectifieing the Tables of the motions of the Heavens, and the places of
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1344-518: The use of fractions , developing a keen interest in mathematics and astronomy . In July 1662, he was fascinated by the thirteenth-century work of Johannes de Sacrobosco , De sphaera mundi , and on 12 September 1662 observed his first partial solar eclipse . Early in 1663, he read Thomas Fale 's Horologiographia: The Art of Dialling , which set off an interest in sundials . In the summer of 1663, he read Wingate's Canon , William Oughtred 's Canon , and Thomas Stirrup's Art of Dialling . At about
1386-542: The year 1667 and not 1680, some historians feel that all Flamsteed may have done was incorrectly note the position of a star already known. In 1681 Flamsteed proposed that the two great comets observed in November and December 1680 were not separate bodies, but rather a single comet travelling first towards the Sun and then away from it. Although Isaac Newton first disagreed with Flamsteed, he later came to agree with him and theorized that comets, like planets, moved around
1428-487: Was "[e]levated to the priesthood [and] appointed rector" of the small village of Burstow , near Crawley in Surrey . He held that office, as well as that of Astronomer Royal, until his death. He is buried at Burstow, and the east window in the church was dedicated to him as a memorial. The will of Flamsteed's widow, Margaret, left instructions for her own remains to be deposited "in the same Grave in which Mr John Flamsteed
1470-574: Was born in London, the son of Silas Titus, a salter and Constatia (Constance) Colley. He was educated at Christ Church, Oxford , where he matriculated in 1638, and the Middle Temple. Titus began his political aspirations by writing a pamphlet titled Killing No Murder in 1657 during The Protectorate period of the English Interregnum era of English history. The pamphlet advocated the assassination of Oliver Cromwell . Due to
1512-552: Was considered the first significant contribution of the Greenwich Observatory, and the numerical Flamsteed designations for stars that were added subsequently to a French edition are still in use. In 1729 his wife published his Atlas Coelestis , assisted by Joseph Crosthwait and Abraham Sharp, who were responsible for the technical side. Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of
1554-516: Was greatly impressed (as Isaac Newton had been) by the work of Horrocks. In August 1665, at the age of nineteen and as a gift for his friend Litchford, Flamsteed wrote his first paper on astronomy, entitled Mathematical Essays , concerning the design, use and construction of an astronomer's quadrant , including tables for the latitude of Derby. In September 1670, Flamsteed visited Cambridge and entered his name as an undergraduate at Jesus College . While it seems he never took up full residence, he
1596-470: Was mentioned in the diary kept by Samuel Pepys on two occasions. The following excerpts come from the entries of those days. "Very great deal of company come today, among others Mr. Bellasses, Sir Thomas Lenthropp, Sir Henry Chichley, Colonel Philip Honiwood, and Captain Titus, the last of whom my Lord showed all our cabins, and I suppose he is to take notice what room there will be for the King's entertainment." "This day with great joy Captain Titus told us
1638-421: Was not a Royal Fellow, but provided her patronage to the society, as all reigning British monarchs have done since Charles II of England . Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1951) was elected under statute 12, not as a Royal Fellow. The election of new fellows is announced annually in May, after their nomination and a period of peer-reviewed selection. Each candidate for Fellowship or Foreign Membership
1680-489: Was persuaded by his mistress, Louise de Kérouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth , to hear about a proposal to find longitude by the position of the Moon from an individual known as Le Sieur de St Pierre. Charles appointed a Royal Commission to examine the proposal in December 1674, consisting of Lord Brouncker , Seth Ward , Samuel Moreland , Christopher Wren , Silius Titus , John Pell and Robert Hooke . Having arrived in London on 2 February 1675, and staying with Jonas Moore at
1722-496: Was the most recent supernova in the galaxy's history, an event which would leave as its remnant the strongest radio source outside of the Solar System, known in the third Cambridge (3C) catalogue as 3C 461 and commonly called Cassiopeia A by astronomers. Because the position of "3 Cassiopeiae" does not precisely match that of Cassiopeia A, and because the expansion wave associated with the explosion has been worked backward to
John Flamsteed - Misplaced Pages Continue
1764-539: Was there for two months in 1674, and had the opportunity to hear Isaac Newton's Lucasian Lectures . Ordained a deacon, he was preparing to take up a living in Derbyshire when he was invited to London by his patron Jonas Moore , Surveyor-General of the Ordnance. Moore had recently made an offer to the Royal Society to pay for the establishment of an observatory. These plans were, however, preempted when Charles II
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