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49-558: He is best known for being commander of HMS  Challenger during the Challenger Expedition (1872–1876) under its commission captain, Sir George Nares , for the voyage of scientific discovery in which the ship went round the world. This expedition led to the science of oceanography , after which various ocean features are named, including the Challenger Plateau near New Zealand . During this expedition

98-410: A Navy ship . Herschel had his own inherited money and he paid £500 for passage on the S.S. Mountstuart Elphinstone . He, his wife, their three children and his 20 inch telescope departed from Portsmouth on 13 November 1833. The voyage to South Africa was made to catalogue the stars, nebulae , and other objects of the southern skies. This was to be a completion as well as extension of the survey of

147-679: A photographic fixer , to "fix" pictures and make them permanent, after experimentally applying it thus in early 1839. Herschel's ground-breaking research on the subject was read at the Royal Society in London in March 1839 and January 1840. Herschel wrote many papers and articles, including entries on meteorology, physical geography and the telescope for the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica . He also translated

196-503: A fast and lifelong friendship with Herschel and with Babbage, who was then quite young.(.) My uncle returned from India. He never interfered with anyone's religious beliefs or customs. But no one under his influence could continue to believe in anything in the Bible being specially sacred, except the two elements which it has in common with other sacred books: the knowledge of our relation to others and of man's power to hold direct converse with

245-687: A foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences . In 1835, the New York Sun newspaper wrote a series of satiric articles that came to be known as the Great Moon Hoax , with statements falsely attributed to Herschel about his supposed discoveries of animals living on the Moon, including batlike winged humanoids. Several locations are named for him: the village of Herschel in western Saskatchewan , Canada , site of

294-553: A mirror 18 inches (460 mm) in diameter, and with a 20-foot (6.1 m) focal length . Between 1821 and 1823 he re-examined, with James South , the double stars catalogued by his father. He was one of the founders of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820. For his work with his father, he was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1826 (which he won again in 1836), and with

343-475: A natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process". He prefaced his words with the couplet: He that on such quest would go must know not fear or failing To coward soul or faithless heart the search were unavailing. Taking a gradualist view of development and referring to evolutionary descent from a proto-language , Herschel commented: Words are to the Anthropologist what rolled pebbles are to

392-403: A special dredging platform were installed as well. She was loaded with specimen jars, ethanol for preserving samples acquired, microscopes and other chemical apparatus, trawls , dredges , thermometers , water sampling bottles, sounding leads and devices to collect sediment from the sea bed and great lengths of rope with which to suspend the equipment into the ocean depths. In all she

441-617: The Iliad of Homer. In 1823, Herschel published his findings on the optical spectra of metal salts. Herschel invented the actinometer in 1825 to measure the direct heating power of the Sun's rays, and his work with the instrument is of great importance in the early history of photochemistry . Herschel proposed a correction to the Gregorian calendar, making years that are multiples of 4000 common years rather than leap years , thus reducing

490-705: The American Philosophical Society in 1854. Herschel published a catalogue of his astronomical observations in 1864, as the General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters , a compilation of his own work and that of his father's, expanding on the senior Herschel's Catalogue of Nebulae . A further complementary volume was published posthumously, as the General Catalogue of 10,300 Multiple and Double Stars . Herschel correctly considered astigmatism to be due to irregularity of

539-780: The Lalande Medal of the French Academy of Sciences in 1825, while in 1821 the Royal Society bestowed upon him the Copley Medal for his mathematical contributions to their Transactions. Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1831. He also seemed to be aware of Indian thought and mathematics introduced to him by George Everest as claimed by Mary Boole: Some time about 1825, he came to England for two or three years, and made

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588-627: The Maclear's Rat on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean was named after him. He is also honoured in the specific epithet of Dicliptera maclearii , a plant in the family Acanthaceae which is endemic to Christmas Island. Maclear entered the Navy in September 1851 as a cadet on board the frigate Castor , then bearing the broad pennant of Commodore Christopher Wyvill , then commanding

637-650: The River Medway , where she stayed until she was sold to J B Garnham on 6 January 1921 and broken up for her copper bottom that same year. Only her figurehead now remains, kept at the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton . [REDACTED] Media related to HMS Challenger (1858) at Wikimedia Commons John Frederick William Herschel Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH FRS ( / ˈ h ɜːr ʃ əl , ˈ h ɛər -/ ; 7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871)

686-611: The 'Arctic Pilot' (vol. ii. 1901 and vol. iii. 1905). He was a fellow of both the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Meteorological Society . Maclear was the second son and eighth child of Irishman Sir Thomas Maclear , Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope . He married, on 4 June 1878, Julia, the sixth daughter of Sir John Frederick William Herschel . They had no children. He died from heart failure in an hotel at Niagara on 17 July 1907. His body

735-637: The Astronomer Royal at the Cape of Good Hope and the members of the two families became close friends. During this time, he also witnessed the Great Eruption of Eta Carinae (December 1837). In addition to his astronomical work, however, this voyage to a far corner of the British empire also gave Herschel an escape from the pressures under which he found himself in London, where he was one of

784-556: The Cape flora. Herschel used a camera lucida to obtain accurate outlines of the specimens and left the details to his wife. Even though their portfolio had been intended as a personal record, and despite the lack of floral dissections in the paintings, their accurate rendition makes them more valuable than many contemporary collections. Some 112 of the 132 known flower studies were collected and published as Flora Herscheliana in 1996. The book also included work by Charles Davidson Bell and Thomas Bowler. As their home during their stay in

833-516: The Cape of Good Hope in 1847. In this publication he proposed the names still used today for the seven then-known satellites of Saturn : Mimas , Enceladus , Tethys , Dione , Rhea , Titan , and Iapetus . In the same year, Herschel received his second Copley Medal from the Royal Society for this work. A few years later, in 1852, he proposed the names still used today for the four then-known satellites of Uranus : Ariel , Umbriel , Titania , and Oberon . A stone obelisk, erected in 1842 and now in

882-769: The Cape station. In her he saw service during the Xhosa Wars in 1851, and afterwards, as a midshipman of Algiers , served in the Baltic and in the Black Sea from 1854 to 1856, receiving, the Baltic, Turkish, and Crimean medals, with the clasp for Sevastopol . He passed his lieutenant 's examination in July 1857, and served on board Cyclops in the Red Sea as mate during the outbreak at Jeddah in 1858. On 19 May 1859 he

931-524: The Cape, the Herschels had selected 'Feldhausen' ("Field Houses"), an old estate on the south-eastern side of Table Mountain . Here John set up his reflector to begin his survey of the southern skies. Herschel, at the same time, read widely. Intrigued by the ideas of gradual formation of landscapes set out in Charles Lyell 's Principles of Geology , he wrote to Lyell on 20 February 1836 praising

980-583: The Chief Constructor at Chatham Dockyard with a view to converting the vessel into a training ship for boys of the Royal Navy. She was found suitable and it was planned to take the place of HMS Eurydice which sank off the Isle of Wight on 24 March 1878. The Admiralty did not go ahead with the conversion and she remained in reserve until 1883, when she was converted into a receiving hulk in

1029-634: The China station. He returned to England in her and, in October 1867, was chosen to be first lieutenant of the frigate HMS Octavia , flagship of Commodore Heath in the East Indies . In her he took part in the Abyssinian campaign of 1868 , earning the medal and his promotion to commander on 14 August 1868. In 1872 Challenger was commissioned by Sir George Nares, with Maclear as his commander, for

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1078-623: The Geologist – battered relics of past ages often containing within them indelible records capable of intelligent interpretation – and when we see what amount of change 2000 years has been able to produce in the languages of Greece & Italy or 1000 in those of Germany France & Spain we naturally begin to ask how long a period must have lapsed since the Chinese, the Hebrew, the Delaware &

1127-664: The Malesass [Malagasy] had a point in common with the German & Italian & each other – Time! Time! Time! – we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as

1176-524: The all inventive Euler himself. Herschel served as president of the Royal Astronomical Society three times: 1827–1829, 1839–1841 and 1847–1849. Herschel's A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy , published early in 1831 as part of Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet cyclopædia , set out methods of scientific investigation with an orderly relationship between observation and theorising. He described nature as being governed by laws which were difficult to discern or to state mathematically, and

1225-544: The average length of the calendar year from 365.2425 days to 365.24225. Although this is closer to the mean tropical year of 365.24219 days, his proposal has never been adopted because the Gregorian calendar is based on the mean time between vernal equinoxes (currently 365.242 374 days). Herschel was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1832, and in 1836,

1274-586: The book as a work that would bring "a complete revolution in [its] subject, by altering entirely the point of view in which it must thenceforward be contemplated" and opening a way for bold speculation on "that mystery of mysteries, the replacement of extinct species by others." Herschel himself thought catastrophic extinction and renewal "an inadequate conception of the Creator" and by analogy with other intermediate causes , "the origination of fresh species, could it ever come under our cognizance, would be found to be

1323-561: The cornea and theorised that vision could be improved by the application of some animal jelly contained in a capsule of glass against the cornea. His views were published in an article entitled Light in 1828 and the Encyclopædia Metropolitana in 1845. Discoveries of Herschel include the galaxies NGC 7 , NGC 10 , NGC 25 , and NGC 28 . He declined an offer from the Duke of Sussex that they travel to South Africa on

1372-634: The days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years. The document was circulated, and Charles Babbage incorporated extracts in his ninth and unofficial Bridgewater Treatise , which postulated laws set up by a divine programmer. When HMS Beagle called at Cape Town , Captain Robert FitzRoy and the young naturalist Charles Darwin visited Herschel on 3 June 1836. Later on, Darwin would be influenced by Herschel's writings in developing his theory advanced in The Origin of Species . In

1421-705: The discovery of Dolichorhynchops herschelensis , a type of plesiosaur ; Mount Herschel in Antarctica ; the crater J. Herschel on the Moon ; and the settlement of Herschel, Eastern Cape and the Herschel Girls' School in Cape Town , South Africa. While it is commonly accepted that Herschel Island, in the Arctic Ocean, part of the Yukon Territory , was named after him, the entries in

1470-592: The expedition journal of Sir John Franklin state that the latter wished to honour the Herschel family, of which John Herschel's father, Sir William Herschel , and his aunt, Caroline Herschel , are as notable as John. Herschel married Margaret Brodie Stewart (1810–1884) on 3 March 1829 at St. Marlyebone Church in London, and was father of the following children: Herschel died on 11 May 1871 at age 79 at Collingwood, his home near Hawkhurst in Kent. On his death, he

1519-713: The flagship of the Australia Station between 1866 and 1870. As part of the North America and West Indies Station , she took part in naval operations during the Second French intervention in Mexico , including the occupation of Veracruz , in 1862. She was assigned as the flagship of Australia Station in 1866, undertaking a punitive expedition in Fiji before leaving the station four years later. She

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1568-491: The grounds of The Grove Primary School , marks the site where his 20-ft reflector once stood. Herschel made numerous important contributions to photography. He made improvements in photographic processes , particularly in inventing the cyanotype process, which became known as blueprints , and variations, such as the chrysotype . In 1839, he made a photograph on glass, which still exists, and experimented with some colour reproduction, noting that rays of different parts of

1617-462: The highest aim of natural philosophy was understanding these laws through inductive reasoning , finding a single unifying explanation for a phenomenon. This became an authoritative statement with wide influence on science, particularly at the University of Cambridge where it inspired the student Charles Darwin with "a burning zeal" to contribute to this work. He was elected as a member to

1666-513: The most sought-after of all British men of science. While in southern Africa , he engaged in a broad variety of scientific pursuits free from a sense of strong obligations to a larger scientific community. It was, he later recalled, probably the happiest time in his life. A village in the contemporary province of Eastern Cape is named after him. Herschel combined his talents with those of his wife, Margaret, and between 1834 and 1838 they produced 131 botanical illustrations of fine quality, showing

1715-410: The northern heavens undertaken initially by his father William Herschel . He arrived in Cape Town on 15 January 1834 and set up a private 21 ft (6.4 m) telescope at Feldhausen (site of present day Grove Primary School ) at Claremont , a suburb of Cape Town . Amongst his other observations during this time was that of the return of Comet Halley . Herschel collaborated with Thomas Maclear ,

1764-513: The opening lines of that work, Darwin writes that his intent is "to throw some light on the origin of species – that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers," referring to Herschel. However, Herschel ultimately rejected the theory of natural selection. Herschel returned to England in 1838, was created a baronet , of Slough in the County of Buckingham, and published Results of Astronomical Observations made at

1813-459: The platinum process on the basis of the light sensitivity of platinum salts, later developed by William Willis . Herschel coined the term photography in 1839. Herschel was also the first to apply the terms negative and positive to photography. Herschel discovered sodium thiosulfate to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery that this "hyposulphite of soda" ("hypo") could be used as

1862-462: The science of photography, and investigated colour blindness and the chemical power of ultraviolet rays. His Preliminary Discourse (1831), which advocated an inductive approach to scientific experiment and theory-building, was an important contribution to the philosophy of science . Herschel was born in Slough , Buckinghamshire, the son of Mary Baldwin and astronomer Sir William Herschel . He

1911-514: The spectrum tended to impart their own colour to a photographic paper . Herschel made experiments using photosensitive emulsions of vegetable juices, called phytotypes, also known as anthotypes , and published his discoveries in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in 1842. He collaborated in the early 1840s with Henry Collen , portrait painter to Queen Victoria . Herschel originally discovered

1960-481: The unseen truth. He stated in his historical article Mathematics in Brewster's Cyclopedia : The Brahma Sidd'hanta, the work of Brahmagupta, an Indian astronomer at the beginning of the seventh century, contains a general method for the resolution of indeterminate problems of the second degree; an investigation which actually baffled the skill of every modern analyst till the time of Lagrange's solution, not excepting

2009-486: The voyage of scientific discovery around the world. Returning home in her in 1876, on 14 August Maclear was promoted to captain . In 1879 he succeeded Sir George Nares in command of the sloop Alert and remained in her until 1882, completing the survey of the Straits of Magellan . From 1883 to 1887 he commanded Flying Fish on surveying service. On 20 June 1891 he reached flag rank , and two months later retired. He

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2058-462: Was a grand tour of the world covering 68,000 nautical miles (125,936 km) organized by the Royal Society in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh . British scientist Charles Thomson led a large scientific team which accompanied the crew. To enable her to probe the depths, all but two of Challenger ' s guns had been removed and her spars reduced to make more space available for scientific instruments. Laboratories, extra cabins and

2107-463: Was an English polymath active as a mathematician , astronomer , chemist , inventor and experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work. Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy . He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus – the seventh planet, discovered by his father Sir William Herschel . He made many contributions to

2156-566: Was picked to undertake the first global marine research expedition: the Challenger expedition . She carried a complement of 243 officers, scientists and sailors when she embarked on her 68,890-nautical-mile (127,580 km) journey. The United States Space Shuttle Challenger was named after the ship. Her figurehead is on display in the foyer of the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton . The Challenger expedition , which embarked from Portsmouth , England on 21 December 1872,

2205-535: Was promoted to vice admiral on the retired list in 1897, and to admiral on the retired list on 21 January 1903. After leaving the sea, Maclear assisted in the compilation of several volumes of the official sailing directions, especially those for the Eastern Archipelago (1890 and 1893), for the west coasts of Central America and the United States (1896), for Bering Sea and Alaska (1898), and

2254-465: Was promoted to lieutenant, and shortly afterwards was appointed to HMS Sphinx , in which he served on the China station until 1862, being present at several engagements during the second Chinese war, and especially at Taku Forts , for which he received the clasp. In 1863 he went to Excellent to qualify as a gunnery lieutenant. In February 1864, Maclear was appointed to Princess Royal , flagship on

2303-543: Was supplied with 181 miles (291 km) of Italian hemp for sounding, trawling and dredging. Challenger ' s crew was the first to sound the deepest part of the ocean, which was thereafter named the Challenger Deep . She was commissioned as a His Majesty's Coastguard and Royal Naval Reserve training ship at the Harwich Dockyard in July 1876. In 1878, Challenger went through an overhaul by

2352-601: Was taken to England for burial. Maclear Island in Queensland, Australia is named after him, as is Mount Maclear (Latitude -20.317, Longitude 148.783)) near Proserpine, Queensland, Australia. The Maclear's rat is also named after him. HMS Challenger (1858) HMS Challenger was a Pearl -class corvette of the Royal Navy launched on 13 February 1858 at the Woolwich Dockyard . She served

2401-427: Was the nephew of astronomer Caroline Herschel . He studied shortly at Eton College and St John's College, Cambridge , graduating as Senior Wrangler in 1813. It was during his time as an undergraduate that he became friends with the mathematicians Charles Babbage and George Peacock . He left Cambridge in 1816 and started working with his father. He took up astronomy in 1816, building a reflecting telescope with

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