The Georgian Star: How William and Caroline Herschel Revolutionized Our Understanding of the Cosmos
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“A bright, shiny gift to popular-science collections.”—Booklist
Trained as a musician, amateur scientist William Herschel found international fame after discovering the planet Uranus in 1781. Though he is still best known for this finding, his partnership with his sister Caroline yielded other groundbreaking work that affects how we see the world today. The Herschels made comprehensive surveys of the night sky, carefully categorizing every visible object in the void. Caroline wrote an influential catalogue of nebulae, and William discovered infrared radiation. Veteran science writer Michael D. Lemonick guides readers through the depths of the solar system and into his subjects’ private lives: William developed bizarre theories about inhabitants of the sun; he procured an unheard-of salary for Caroline from King George III even as he hassled over the funding for an enormous, forty-foot telescope; and the siblings feuded over William’s marriage but eventually reconciled.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Former Time magazine science writer Lemonick provides an entertaining and illuminating look at a pathbreaking astronomical partnership. When William Herschel, in 1781, discovered Uranus (which he named the Georgian Star in hopes of getting much-needed funding from King George), he was a self-taught amateur astronomer earning his living as a musician. When the king offered Herschel 200 per year a 50% drop in income the astronomer gladly accepted the chance to become the king's astronomer. His goal was to discover how the universe was constructed, and Herschel, an obsessive observer, made a remarkable number of discoveries, including infrared radiation. He also taught his sister Caroline to help with his work, and soon she was publishing her own discoveries, hunting comets and cataloguing thousands of stars and nebulae. When the king agreed to give her a salary, she became the first paid woman scientist. Lemonick (Echo of the Big Bang) paints a vibrant and revealing picture of these two scientists whose painstaking observation and cataloguing paved the way for modern astronomy. 9 illus.
