William Herschel

Also known as Frederick William Herschel, Sir William Herschel, Sir Frederick William Herschel

German-born British astronomer and composer (1738–1822)

OverviewAI-generated

William Herschel was a male composer and person from Germany. He is recognized in the Royal Society collection and the American Academy Arts Sciences collection. His works include Observations and remarks on the figure, the climate, and the atmosphere of Saturn, and its ring, Observations of the transit of Mercury over the disk of the sun, Miscellaneous papers, A fourth catalogue of the comparative brightness of the stars, and On nebulous stars, properly so called.

Born in 1738, he died in 1822. His music is tagged as classical, baroque, and classical period. Similar artists include Franz Ignaz Beck, Christian Cannabich, Carl Friedrich Abel, Josef Mysliveček, and Samuel Arnold. He is referenced by 1,722 other encyclopedia articles.

Synthesized by Vinony from 25 facts across 9 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Europeana Sparql, Crossref, Wikiquote, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born: 1738
Died: 1822
Works: 25

Top works

Observations and remarks on the figure, the climate, and the atmosphere of Saturn, and its ring
Observations of the changeable brightness of the satellites of Jupiter, and of the variation in their apparent magnitudes
Observations of the transit of Mercury over the disk of the sun
Miscellaneous papers
A fourth catalogue of the comparative brightness of the stars

via Open Library + Wikidata

Music · MusicBrainz

Type: Person
Gender: Male
Origin: Germany
Active from: 1738-11-15
Active to: 1822-08-25

composer

Discography

Discogs

via MusicBrainz · CC0

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners: 2,808
Total plays: 18,332

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

VMD: Visual molecular dynamics
· 1996 · cited 62,838x
Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure
· 1976 · cited 44,787x
Comparison of simple potential functions for simulating liquid water
· 1983 · cited 39,496x
QIIME allows analysis of high-throughput community sequencing data
· 2010 · cited 30,935x
Preparation of Graphitic Oxide
· 1958 · cited 28,673x

via Crossref · CC0

Music

Open in Spotify

Quotes

“I compared it to H Geminorum and the small star in the quartile between Auriga and Gemini, and finding it so much larger than either of them, suspected it to be a comet.”
“Hier ist wahrhaftig ein Loch im Himmel !”
“A knowledge of the construction of the heavens has always been the ultimate object of my observations...”
“I must freely confess that by continuing my sweeps of the heavens my opinion of the arrangement of the stars and their magnitudes, and of some other particulars, has undergone a gradual change...”
“An equal scattering of the stars may be admitted in certain calculations; but when we examine the milky way, or the closely compressed clusters of stars... this supposed equality of scattering must be given up.”
“'We may... have surmised nebulae to be no other than clusters of stars disguised by their very great distance, but a longer experience and better acquaintance with the nature of nebulae, will not allow a general admission of such a principle, although undoubtedly a cluster of stars may assume a nebulous appearance when it is too remote for us to discern the stars of which it is composed.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Works in European collections

3 objects attributed to William Herschel, held across European museums, libraries & archives · via Europeana

Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel to Johann Hieronymus Schroeter

Untitled

~38 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Frederick William Herschel (/ˈhɜːrʃəl/ HUR-shəl; German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel [ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈhɛʁʃl̩]; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German–British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, he followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Britain in 1757 at the age of 19.

Taking an interest in astronomy in 1766, Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that many objects called nebulae in the Messier catalogue were actually clusters of stars. On 13 March 1781 while making observations he made note of a new object in the constellation of Gemini. This would, after several weeks of verification and consultation with other astronomers, be confirmed to be a new planet, eventually given the name of Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity, and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George III appointed him Court Astronomer. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “William Herschel” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.