Nevil
Maskelyne
Nevil
Maskelyne is a British astronomer who contributed to the science of navigation.
He was born on October 6 1732 in London. When he was only twelve years old his
father had passed away making it hard for his family to get by. He was
attending Westminster School when two events changed his life forever. The
first was that his mother had died in 1748. The second event was an eclipse
that took place in July 1748, which enkindled his interest in astronomy. In
1749 Maskelyne attended St. Catherine’s College in Cambridge and was ordained a
minister in 1755.
During
the eighteenth century one problem that many astronomers had was finding the
longitude. Without longitude many
sailors would get into shipwrecks and get lost at sea. Maskelyne was the person
who had test two theoretical solutions to the longitude problem. He tested the
transport of a timekeeper technique, which required that he test chronometers.
He however favored the lunar distance method that used lunar tables. This
technique allowed him to create the Nautical
almanac which was a publication of tables and computational techniques to
help a navigator. The Almanac is what
led to Greenwich having the zero point of longitude. He was soon appointed as
an Astronomer Royal after two others had died in a short amount of time. In 1772 Maskelyne also suggested performing
the Schiehallion experiment. This would attempt to determine the density of the
earth using a plumb line. He ended up performing the experiment in 1774 on the
mountain Schiehallion as it had a naturally conical shape. He was then able to
determine that the Earth had 4.5 times the density of the water. This was
actually very close to the actual number of 5.515. He is also known for his observations of Venus
and its effects on tides at Saint Helena and Barbados. Maskelyne also introduced
the concept of being able to measure time to the nearest tenth of a second and
introduced several more practical improvements.
In
1785 Maskelyne married Sophia Rose of Cotterstock. He had one child named
Margaret in 1786 that would later go on to have children who became a professor
of mineralogy at Oxford. Maskelyne’s sister who is also named Margaret would
marry Robert Clive who was the military leader in charge of the East India
Company. Nevil Maskelyne would die on
February 9 1811 in Greenwich England.
Maskelyne
had won many different kinds of awards such as the Royal Society’s Copley medal
in 1755. This is given to individuals
who have done outstanding research in any scientific field. In 1778 He was
elected as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He
currently has a crater on the moon and a small chain of islands in the Pacific
Ocean named after him.
