in 1736 a call to the chair of medicine, anatomy, botany and surgery in the newly founded university of Göttingen. He became F.R.S. in 1743, and was ennobled in 1749. The quantity of work achieved by Haller in the seventeen years during which he occupied his Göttingen professorship was immense. Apart from the ordinary work of his classes, which entailed upon him the task of newly organizing a botanical garden, an anatomical theatre and museum, an obstetrical school, and similar institutions, he carried on without interruption those original investigations in botany and physiology, the results of which are preserved in the numerous works associated with his name; he continued also to persevere in his youthful habit of poetical composition, while at the same time he conducted a monthly journal (the Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen), to which he is said to have contributed twelve thousand articles relating to almost every branch of human knowledge. He also warmly interested himself in most of the religious questions, both ephemeral and permanent, of his day; and the erection of the Reformed church in Göttingen was mainly due to his unwearied energy. Notwithstanding all this variety of absorbing interests he never felt at home in Göttingen; his untravelled heart kept ever turning towards his native Bern (where he had been elected a member of the great council in 1745), and in 1753 he resolved to resign his chair and return to Switzerland.
The twenty-one years of his life which followed were largely occupied in the discharge of his duties in the minor political post of a Rathhausammann which he had obtained by lot, and in the preparation of his Bibliotheca medica, the botanical, surgical and anatomical parts of which he lived to complete; but he also found time to write the three philosophical romances—Usong (1771), Alfred (1773) and Fabius and Cato (1774),—in which his views as to the respective merits of despotism, of limited monarchy and of aristocratic republican government are fully set forth. About 1773 the state of his health rendered necessary his entire withdrawal from public business; for some time he supported his failing strength by means of opium, on the use of which he communicated a paper to the Proceedings of the Göttingen Royal Society in 1776; the excessive use of the drug is believed, however, to have hastened his death, which occurred on the 17th of December 1777. Haller, who had been three times married, left eight children, the eldest of whom, Gottlieb Emanuel, attained to some distinction as a botanist and as a writer on Swiss historical bibliography (1785–1788, 7 vols.).
Subjoined is a classified but by no means an exhaustive list of his very numerous works in various branches of science and literature (a complete list, up to 1775, numbering 576 items, including various editions, was published by Haller himself, in 1775, at the end of vol. 6 of the correspondence addressed to him by various learned friends):—(1) Anatomical:—Icones anatomicae (1743–1754); Disputationes anatomicae selectiores (1746–1752); and Opera acad. minora anatomici argumenti (1762–1768). (2) Physiological:—De respiratione experimenta anatomica (1747); Primae lineae physiologiae (1747); and Elementa physiologiae corporis humani (1757–1760). (3) Pathological and surgical:—Opuscula pathologica (1754); Disputationum chirurg. collectio (1777); also careful editions of Boerhaave’s Praelectiones academicae in suas institutiones rei medicae (1739), and of the Artis medicae principia of the same author (1769–1774). (4) Botanical:—Enumeratio methodica stirpium Helveticarum (1742); Opuscula botanica (1749); Bibliotheca botanica (1771). (5) Theological:—Briefe über die wichtigsten Wahrheiten der Offenbarung (1772); and Briefe zur Vertheidigung der Offenbarung (1775–1777). (6) Poetical:—Gedichte (1732, 12th ed., 1777). His three romances have been already mentioned. Several volumes of lectures and “Tagebücher” or journals were published posthumously.
See J. G. Zimmermann, Das Leben des Herrn von Haller (1755), and the articles by Förster and Seiler in Ersch and Gruber’s Encyklopädie, and particularly the detailed biography (over 500 pages) by L. Hirzel, printed at the head of his elaborate edition (Frauenfeld, 1882) of Haller’s Gedichte.
HALLER, BERTHOLD (1492–1536), Swiss reformer, was born
at Aldingen in Württemberg, and after studying at Pforzheim,
where he met Melanchthon, and at Cologne, taught in the
gymnasium at Bern. He was appointed assistant preacher at
the church of St Vincent in 1515 and people’s priest in 1520.
Even before his acquaintance with Zwingli in 1521 he had begun
to preach the Reformation, his sympathetic character and his
eloquence making him a great force. In 1526 he was at the
abortive conference of Baden, and in January 1528 drafted and
defended the ten theses for the conference of Bern which
established the new religion in that city. He left no writings
except a few letters which are preserved in Zwingli’s works.
He died on the 25th of February 1536.
Life by Pestalozzi (Elberfeld, 1861).
HALLEY, EDMUND (1656–1742), English astronomer, was
born at Haggerston, London, on the 29th of October 1656.
His father, a wealthy soapboiler, placed him at St Paul’s school,
where he was equally distinguished for classical and mathematical
ability. Before leaving it for Queen’s College, Oxford,
in 1673, he had observed the change in the variation of the
compass, and at the age of nineteen, he supplied a new and
improved method of determining the elements of the planetary
orbits (Phil. Trans. xi. 683). His detection of considerable
errors in the tables then in use led him to the conclusion that a
more accurate ascertainment of the places of the fixed stars was
indispensable to the progress of astronomy; and, finding that
Flamsteed and Hevelius had already undertaken to catalogue
those visible in northern latitudes, he assumed to himself the
task of making observations in the southern hemisphere. A
recommendation from Charles II. to the East India Company
procured for him an apparently suitable, though, as it proved,
ill-chosen station, and in November 1676 he embarked for St
Helena. On the voyage he noticed the retardation of the pendulum
in approaching the equator; and during his stay on the
island he observed, on the 7th of November 1677, a transit of
Mercury, which suggested to him the important idea of employing
similar phenomena for determining the sun’s distance. He
returned to England in November 1678, having by the registration
of 341 stars won the title of the “Southern Tycho,” and
by the translation to the heavens of the “Royal Oak,” earned
a degree of master of arts, conferred at Oxford by the king’s
command on the 3rd of December 1678, almost simultaneously
with his election as fellow of the Royal Society. Six months
later, the indefatigable astronomer started for Danzig to set
at rest a dispute of long standing between Hooke and Hevelius
as to the respective merits of plain or telescopic sights; and
towards the end of 1680 he proceeded on a continental tour.
In Paris he observed, with G. D. Cassini, the great comet of 1680
after its perihelion passage; and having returned to England,
he married in 1682 Mary, daughter of Mr Tooke, auditor of the
exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously for fifty-five years.
He now fixed his residence at Islington, engaged chiefly upon
lunar observations, with a view to the great desideratum of a
method of finding the longitude at sea. His mind, however,
was also busy with the momentous problem of gravity. Having
reached so far as to perceive that the central force of the solar
system must decrease inversely as the square of the distance,
and applied vainly to Wren and Hooke for further elucidation,
he made in August 1684 that journey to Cambridge for the
purpose of consulting Newton, which resulted in the publication
of the Principia. The labour and expense of passing this great
work through the press devolved upon Halley, who also wrote
the prefixed hexameters ending with the well-known line—
In 1696 he was, although a zealous Tory, appointed deputy comptroller of the mint at Chester, and (August 19, 1698) he received a commission as captain of the “Paramour Pink” for the purpose of making extensive observations on the conditions of terrestrial magnetism. This task he accomplished in a voyage which lasted two years, and extended to the 52nd degree of S. latitude. The results were published in a General Chart of the Variation of the Compass in 1701; and immediately afterwards he executed by royal command a careful survey of the tides and coasts of the British Channel, an elaborate map of which he produced in 1702. On his return from a journey to Dalmatia, for the purpose of selecting and fortifying the port of Trieste, he was nominated, November 1703, Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, and received an honorary degree of
