Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet, an English polymath, mathematician, astronomer, chemist, botanist, inventor,
Biographical Overview
Born in England, 1792-1871 Mathematician and Photographer Co-Founder and President of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1820
Awards
Smith’s Prize, 1813 Copley Medal, 1821 Lalande Medal, 1825 Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, 1826 Royal Guelphic Order, 1831 Royal Medal,1836 and 1840
Worldview
Using a biblical worldview perspective, Herschel successfully applied the scientific method to investigate the laws of nature, His worldview is notable from what he said –
“We have here attained a point in science where the human intellect is compelled to acknowledge its weakness, and to feel that no conception the wildest imagination can form will bear the least comparison with the intrinsic greatness of the subject.”
“Justly entitled, by the generality of its character, to be considered as forming an epoch in the history of astronomy, and presenting one of the most magnificent examples of the simplicity and universality of those fundamental laws of nature by which their great Author has shown that he is the same today and forever, here and everywhere.”
Education should “fit them for a higher state of existence, by teaching them those which connect them with their Maker and Redeemer.”
“All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more strongly the truths that come from on high and are contained in the Sacred Writings.”
“[The] universality of those fundamental laws of nature by which their great Author has shown that He is the same today and forever, here and everywhere.”
John Herschel
Charles Darwin sent Herschel a copy of The Origin of Species in 1859. On 10 December Darwin told Charles Lyell of having “heard by round about channel” that Herschel says my Book “is the law of higgledy-piggledy… What this exactly means I do not know, but it is evidently very contemptuous. If true this is great blow & discouragement.”
