Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley was an English astronomer and mathematician who was the first to calculate the orbit of a comet later named after him.
Astronomer
November 8, 1656
Scorpio
January 25, 1742
85
Haggerston, England
Edmond Halley, born on November 8, 1656, in Haggerston near London, was a renowned British astronomer and mathematician. He is best known for accurately predicting the return of a comet, which was subsequently named after him. Halley’s influence also contributed to the publication of Isaac Newton’s universal theory of gravitation in the Principia. He made significant contributions to astrophysics and founded the first observatory in the Southern Hemisphere. Halley published the inaugural telescopically based star catalog of the southern skies and conducted research on tidal phenomena. An interesting fact about Edmond Halley is that he was the first to calculate the orbit of the comet that now bears his name.