Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley (1656–1742) was an English astronomer, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist, best known for predicting the return of the comet that now bears his name—Halley’s Comet.

Born in Haggerston, London, Halley studied at Queen’s College, Oxford, but left before graduating to pursue astronomy. In 1676, he traveled to the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic to catalog stars of the Southern Hemisphere, earning him early fame.

Halley was a close associate of Isaac Newton, encouraging him to publish his groundbreaking Principia Mathematica and even funding its publication in 1687. In his own right, Halley made significant contributions to understanding planetary motion, geophysics, and meteorology. He proposed a method to determine the Earth’s distance from the Sun using the transit of Venus.

In 1705, Halley used historical records to show that comets appearing in 1531, 1607, and 1682 were the same object, predicting it would return in 1758. It did, and the comet was posthumously named after him.

He later became Astronomer Royal in 1720 and served until his death in 1742. Halley’s work laid important foundations in several scientific fields and marked a major step forward in celestial mechanics.

Source: https://www.aaas.org/taxonomy/term/10/multi-layered-wisdom-edmond-halley