Nevil Maskelyne Astronomer Biography

Nevil Maskelyne Dr Nevil Maskelyne was born on October 6, 1732 in London, England. Nevil Maskelyne's father died when he was 12, leaving the family quite poor. Maskelyne was the fifth English Astronomer Royal, who held this particular office from 1765-1811. Shortly after an eclipse on July 25, 1748, Maskelyne discovered his passion for Astronomy and around this time was appointed the curacy of Barnet. When he was ordained as a minister in 1755, he became a member of Cambridge Trinity College the following year. In 1758, Maskelyne was admitted into the Royal Soceity which sent him to the island of St. Helena to make observations on the transit of Venus. This observations were pertinent in calculating the Earth's distance from the sun, which in turn could calculate the scale of the entire universe. Because of bad weather conditions, these observations were very difficult to make, so instead he created something called the lunar distance method. This method contained very difficult mathematical calculations that only Maskelyne could accomplish at the time. Some difficulties of this method include: the Sun's movements vs. the moons movements, the copmutations are long and laborious,etc. In 1761, Maskelyne started writing his book on the lunar distance method, which he published in 1763. After this publication, the Board of Longitude sent him to Barbados to calculate the longitude of the capital, Bridgetown, and also to test his lunar distance method and test its accuracy. There were multiple geodetical operations Maskelyne was interested during his career, like the measure of a degree of latitude. In 1772, Maskelyne proposed an idea which would come to be known as the Schiehallion experiment. In 1774, Nevil Maskelyne tried this experiment which was to determine the density of the Earth by using a plumb line.Nevil's very first contribution to Astronimical Literature was the book A Proposal for Discovering the Annual Parallax of Sirius, which was published in 1760. Maskelyne also introduced the measurement of time to tenths of a second. In 1775, Maskelyne was awarded the Royal Society's Copley medal. The lunar crater Maskelyne was named for him.  In 1764, Nevil Maskelyne took a voyage to Barbados to carry out trials of Harrison’s timepiece.  When he returned he was appointed Astronomer Royal and published the first volume of the Nautical Almanac in 1766. He continued to work on this project till his death. Maskelyne was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1775 for his work on determining the Earth’s density. He carried out an experiment using a plumb line on the mountain Schiehallion in Perthshire, Scotland.  He computed that the Earth’s density is about 4.5 times water’s density. Some of Nevil Maskelyne’s other impressive work includes several practical improvements.  He was the first to come up with measurement of time to the tenths of a second!  He was also able to convince the government to replace John Bird’s mural quadrant, an angle measuring instrument, with a repeating circle.  The repeating circle was to be 6 feet in diameter. Unfortunately, Maskelyne was not alive to see it completed.Because of Nevil Maskelyne’s extreme passion and dedication to the science of astronomy, we have been able to progress greatly in the subject.  He was clearly a very large contributor to astronomy as we know it today.In the year 1785, Maskelyne married Sophia Rose and she bore him one child, Margaret. Their daughter Margaret ended up eventually being the mother of a professor of mineorology at Oxford. Nevil Maskelyne died on February 9, 1811. He was 79 years old, and died at the Observatory. He left behind one daughter, who married Mr. Anthony Mervin Story, who actually added the name Maskelyne to his own thanks to the family estates brought to him by his wife.  Today, Nevil Maskeylne is buried in the churchyard of St. Mary the virgin in Wiltshire, England. He was a very amiable, mild and generous person all other Astronomers considered him like a brother and revered him and his wisdom.