No one could well have begun with prospects more remote from so high a career, for Edmund Halley was born in 1656, the son of a soap boiler in a shabby London suburb. From the refuse of rancid fat and lye the boy was rescued by friends, who procured for him a scholarship at Saint Paul’s school. By his brilliant attainments in mathematics he won another scholarship to Oxford University.
While at Oxford the youth published a treatise on the planetary orbits and argued the Sun’s axial rotation.
On his graduation from Oxford, the young would-be astronomer conceived the project of turning his attention to the southern Stars, of which no good observations had been made. Shortly before this time a Dutch astronomer, named Houtman, had observed these Stars in the island of Sumatra; and Blaeu, the best globe maker of the age, had used these new observations in the correction of his celestial globes. Halley, on examining these corrections, came to the conclusion that he himself could do better. He also concluded that the Island of St. Helena might be a better point for southern observations. His father, unable to pay the expenses of so long a trip, broached the project to some friends. The young astronomer was recommended to King Charles II. by Williamson and Jones Moore, and the King in turn recommended the youth to the Indian Company, which then had control over the island of St. Helena.
After this all was plain sailing. The India Company placed a ship at his disposition and promised him all the assistance he required. Young Halley provided himself with telescopes, and micrometers, and other instruments of the latest approved pattern. In November, 1666, at the age of twenty, he sailed for St. Helena. Among his luggage was a sextant of five and a half feet and a telescope twenty-four feet in length constructed under the supervision of Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal.
Halley was disappointed in the climate of St. Helena. Frequent rains and a constantly hazy sky scarcely permitted any observations in the months of August and September. Notwithstanding these difficulties, he succeeded in observing and cataloguing some 360 Stars.
In addition to his work on the Stars, Halley made some investigations on the Moon’s parallax, combining his observations at St. Helena with those made in northern skies. He also evolved a new theory of the Moon’s motion, which proved of great aid in the determination of longitudes.
On November 7, 1677, Halley observed a transit of Mercury which suggested to him the important idea of employing similar phenomena for the calculation of the Sun’s distance.
Halley returned to England in November, 1678, and was hailed by his fellow astronomers as the “Southern Tycho.” He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and by the King’s command the degree of Master of Arts was conferred upon him by the University of Oxford.
Six months later Halley set out for Dantsic for a personal conference with Hevelius, the Polish astronomer. Halley wanted to satisfy himself as to the accuracy of observations claimed by Hevelius without the aid of a telescope. Halley convinced himself that the errors of the observations made by Hevelius were less than had been supposed, and did not exceed a minute of an arc. The two became life-long friends. Halley proceeded to other cities of Europe where there were observatories. In Paris he observed with Cassini the great Comet of 1680. This was the beginning of Halley’s special study of Comets.
Returning to England, the young astronomer married the daughter of Mr. Tooke, auditor of the Exchequer, with whom he lived harmoniously until her death, fifty-five years later. The young couple settled at Islington, where Halley erected an observatory of his own and engaged in constant lunar observations with a view toward finding a method for computing longitudes at sea.