STS

• William Hershel was the king's astronomer
• nebulae, star clusters, binary stars, and, most famously, the solar system’s first new planet—Uranus
• Uranus - 1781
• Night of June 16, 1807
• John Herschel - March 7, 1792
• John was born from William and Mary baldwin pitt
• John was born in Slough, England
• William was known as the king's astronomer after discovering Uranus and naming it after king George 3rd
• William had a chance to build a 40-foot telescope
• William was best kown for his method of telescopic sweeps
• William lacked advanced mathematical training
• John was privately tutored in advanced techniques before enrolling at university of cambridge
• John was disappointed about the little interest Cambridge had in mathematical development outside the UK
• Cambridge was less a place where young aristocrats learned cultural polish neede to take their place in the elite
• Cambridge was devoted to Dot-age of newton's calculus
• Continental (french) mathematics had developed d-ism by gottfried wilhelm leibniz
• Charles babbage proposed an analytical society that would promote the gospel of d-ism instead of dot-age
• John reserved his real intellectual efforts for the analytical society
• John passed his exams with top marks and received highest honors at graduation in 1813
• John published the philosophical transactions of the royal society after producing a series of mathematical paper
• John was awarded the copley medal in 1821, a prestigious award, by the royal society
• Herschel (along with George Peacock and Babbage) published Elementary Treatise on the Differential and Integral Calculus, a translation of Lacroix’s 1802 influential work
• London, rather than Cambridge, was the center of the UK scientifi c world.
• Under the long presidency of naturalist Joseph Banks, the Royal Society enshrined science as a privileged, gentlemanly pursuit
• there was a parallel push to make science more egalitarian in 1820
• Herschel was at the center of that effort, which helped transform natural philosophy into modern science and the natural philosopher into the modern scientist.
• In London, Herschel moved from pure to applied mathematics and explored a science that still had no fi rm disciplinary boundaries.
• chemistry, mineralogy, and optics
• discovered the properties of sodium thiosulfate solution and set the foundation for what would become the primary method of fixing images in photography
• when he became known as an astronomer, he would tell his wife, Margaret, that “light was my first love.”
• In France, Herschel was also exposed to a new way of organizing science in which privilege was replaced by professionalization.
• In the French Academy of Sciences, natural philosophers were employees of the state and paid for full- time research.
• , London’s Royal Society had only an advisory role to the government and was open to anyone recommended and approved by the society’s fellows
• , Herschel’s strategy involved a group of scientifi c rebels.
• Along with Babbage, he helped found the new Astronomical Society of London in 1820 to challenge the hegemony of the Royal Society
• members were primarily bankers, stockbrokers, and schoolmasters—namely, members of the new professional classes whose membership was resisted in the Royal Society
• London was becoming the commercial and banking capital of the world, and the Astronomical Society aimed to likewise become the clearinghouse for the world’s astronomical data.6
• Prior to William and Caroline’s work, astronomy had been primarily positional and concerned with establishing star positions as a background for measuring the Moon
• Although his catalogs included hundreds of new nebulae and double stars, they did not provide the accuracy or organization for other observers to find them easily—which became a necessity as larger telescopes were constructed that rivaled William’s 40- foot one.
• William’s catalogs lacked standardized descriptions that would allow later observers to measure signs of change in those newly discovered objects, which was important if observations of nebulae and star clusters were to provide evidence for dynamic change in the universe beyond the solar system