Nevil Maskelyne

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.