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Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871)〔(【引用サイトリンク】work=NAHSTE project )〕 was an English polymath, mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, and experimental photographer, who also did valuable botanical work.〔 He was the son of Mary Baldwin and astronomer William Herschel, and the father of twelve children.〔 Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus. He made many contributions to the science of photography, and investigated colour blindness and the chemical power of ultraviolet rays; his ''Preliminary Discourse'' (1831), which advocated an inductive approach to scientific experiment and theory building, was an important contribution to the philosophy of science. == Early life and work on astronomy == Herschel was born in Slough, Buckinghamshire, the son of Mary Baldwin and William Herschel. He studied shortly at Eton College and St John's College, Cambridge, graduating as Senior Wrangler in 1813. It was during his time as an undergraduate that he became friends with Charles Babbage and George Peacock.〔 He took up astronomy in 1816, building a reflecting telescope with a mirror in diameter and with a focal length. Between 1821 and 1823 he re-examined, with James South, the double stars catalogued by his father. For this work, in 1826 he was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (which he won again in 1836), and with the Lalande Medal of the French Academy of Sciences in 1825, while in 1821 the Royal Society bestowed upon him the Copley Medal for his mathematical contributions to their Transactions. Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1831.〔 He served as President of the Royal Astronomical Society three times: 1827–29, 1839–41 and 1847–49. His ''A preliminary discourse on the study of natural philosophy'', published early in 1831 as part of ''Dionysius Lardner's Cabinet cyclopædia'', set out methods of scientific investigation with an orderly relationship between observation and theorising. He described nature as being governed by laws which were difficult to discern or to state mathematically, and the highest aim of natural philosophy was understanding these laws through inductive reasoning, finding a single unifying explanation for a phenomenon. This became an authoritative statement with wide influence on science, particularly at the University of Cambridge where it inspired the student Charles Darwin with "a burning zeal" to contribute to this work.〔 〕 Herschel published a catalogue of his astronomical observations in 1864, as the ''General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters'', a compilation of his own work and that of his father's, expanding on the senior Hershel's ''Catalogue of Nebulae''. A further complementary volume was published posthumously, as the ''General Catalogue of 10,300 Multiple and Double Stars''. He also conceptualized a practical contact lens design in 1823. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「John Herschel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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