Jeremiah Horrocks (1619-1641)
Born at Lower Lodge Farm in Toxteth Park, Liverpool. His father James had moved to Toxteth Park to be apprenticed to Thomas Aspinwall, a watchmaker,
Entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, at the age of 13. After leaving, he became curate of Hoole.
An amateur astronomer, he was the first to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit; and he was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree of Broughton were the only two people to observe and record.
His early death (in 1641) and the chaos of the English Civil War nearly resulted in the loss to science of his treatise on the transit, Venus in sole visa; but for this and his other work he is acknowledged as one of the founding fathers of British astronomy.
Horrocks is remembered on a plaque in Westminster Abbey, and the lunar crater Horrocks is named after him. In 1859 a marble tablet and stained-glass windows commemorating him were installed in the Parish Church of St Michael, Much Hoole. Horrocks Avenue in Garston, Liverpool is also named after him. In 1927, the Jeremiah Horrocks Observatory was built at Moor Park, Preston
See Wikipedia entry and here for more information[1] for the sources of the above and much more information.
See Also
Sources of Information
- ↑ [] Jeremiah Horrocks (1619 - 1641) by V. Barocas, Journal of the British Astronomical Association, Vol. 79, p. 223 - 226. SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)