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52
Life and Works
being perhaps the most important. The whole field was open. What was perhaps more remarkable, there was in England, during Herschel's lifetime, no astronomer, public or private, whose talents, even as an observer, lay in the same direction.
It hardly need be said that as a philosopher in his science, he had then no rival, as he has had none since. His only associates even, were Michell and Wilson.[1]
Without depreciating the abilities of the astronomers of England, his cotemporaries, we may fairly say that Herschel stood a great man among a group of small ones.
Let us endeavor to appreciate the change effected in the state of astronomy not only
- ↑ John Michell had been a member of the Royal Society since 1760: he died in 1793. He was a philosophical thinker, as is shown by his memoirs on the distances of the stars, and by his invention of the method for determining the earth's density. It is not certain that he was personally known to Herschel, although his writings were familiar to the latter.
Alexander Wilson was Professor of Astronomy at Glasgow, and is chiefly known to us by his theory of the nature of the solar spots, which was adopted and enlarged by Herschel. He died in 1786; but the families of Wilson and Herschel remained close friends.
