John Flamsteed
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John Flamsteed
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
John Flamsteed, astronomer, was born on August 19, 1646 in Denby, Derbyshire, England. He was ordained deacon and was preparing to take up a living in Derbyshire, when he was invited to London. On March 4, 1675, he was appointed by royal warrant "The King's Astronomical Observator" - the first British Astronomer Royal, with an allowance of £100 a year. In June 1675, another royal warrant provided for the founding of the Royal Greenwich Observatory, and Flamsteed laid the foundation stone in 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 was finally appointed priest to the parish of Burstow, Surrey. He held that office, as well as that of Astronomer Royal, until his death on January 12, 1719. In 1720 he is buried at Burstow, Surrey.
In 1666 and 1668, Flamsteed calculated accurately the solar eclipses. He is responsible for the earliest recorded sighting of the planet Uranus, which he mistook for a star and catalogued as 34 Tauri.
Spats
Flamsteed is also remembered for his conflicts with Isaac Newton, then President of the Royal Society, who attempted to steal some of Flamsteed's findings for his own work. Newton tricked Flamsteed into doing so through an edict from the King, and produced the findings without crediting Flamsteed. Some years later, Flamsteed managed to buy most copies of the books back, and publicly burnt them in front of the Royal Observatory. He also is known for being prissy in his disapproval of the earthier Edmund Halley. When Halley was appointed Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford in 1704 following the death of Wallis. Flamsteed wrote: Dr. Wallis is dead - Mr Halley expects his place - who now talks, swears and drinks brandy like a sea captain. -- which ignores that after Halley's stint in Saint Helena -- technically -- he was a sea captain!