This time of the year is for the 360th birthday of a cool scientist, Edmond Halley (8.11.1656, London-14.2.1727, London).

 

I am always wondering why Robert Hooke is called the British Da Vinci by the media, whereas no such mentionings for Halley. He was also definitely a Da Vinci style person and derserves the name no less than Hooke.

He was not only an astronomer who has a comet under his name, explained its periodicity and predicted its return, or the one who urged Newton to publish his most important scientific work Mathematica Principia, reviewed it word by word, and published it on his own cost, but also a husband, a father, a geographer, a physicist, a mathematician, a founder of mondern acturary (that is, insurance mathematics), a British Navy captain, a journal editor, and perhaps most important to me, the first true scientist with a scientific mindset.

And yes, he did all of these excellently.

 

Unlike the half-scientist-half-alchemist Issac Newton, Halley was really able to distinguish facts, theories, and mystical ideas. He did science out of pure curiosity and for the pure sake of understanding the objective nature. To manifest the power of God? To gain some superpower? Not for Halley. In the 17th Century truths and myths were completely muddled up, but Halley had the unique awareness of testing beliefs against experimental results. He did so from teenage to the end of life, designing experiments on every topic, from the boiling of ethanol to the Floating Island in Scotland, to the air pressure at the top of the mountains, to the proposal of an international cooperation on Transit of Venus observation, which happened after his death.

But more than that, he was full of bold ideas and creative theories. He proposed methods to measure the age of the earth (which is even today a taboo topic in some religious groups), conjectured earth’s inner structure (and got it half correct in view of the modern theory), connected the polar aurora to the earth’s magnetic field (which is correct), and sailed the Atlantic Ocean twice himself in order to understand this magnetic field. [Sailing was extremely dangerous in that time, see my article on The Flying Dutchman.] Many of his ideas were of course wrong, but they are amazingly falsifiable. In many cases he gave clear instructions of what experiments can validate or falsify the theories.

You won’t find this level of understanding of the scientific method in Newton or Galileo. They had an idea of it, but Halley lived a life for it.

Born as a London middle-class boy and always the best student in St. Paul as well as Oxford, the biography of Halley really encouraged me throughout my teenage. As far as I know, Voltaire was also a great admirer of Halley.

Now my reservoir of scientific knowledge and methods is of course much larger than Halley’s at his time, and yes, my historical interest is more moved to 19th Century mathematics, but Halley’s passion for science is moving me as strongly as ever. Every time I remember him, I seem to know where I need to improve and how to continue as a scientist.

Yes, I hope more people are interested in Halley’s stories and better books about him will come out.

Happy birthday 🙂

 

 

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