Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/250

 the basis of modern astronomy. He determined in this way in 1690 the right ascensions of forty stars to serve as points of reference for the rest. The construction of a catalogue, more accurate and extensive than any yet existing, was his primary purpose; but he continued, as he advanced with it, to compute the errors and correct the tables of the sun, moon, and planets.

Flamsteed was elected into the Royal Society on 8 Feb. 1677; he sat on the council 1681–4, and again 1698–1700. But some years later he allowed his subscription to drop, and his name was, on 9 Nov. 1709, erased from the list of fellows. In December 1677 Dr. Bernard offered to resign the Savilian professorship of astronomy in his favour; but the project was soon found to be hopeless, owing to Flamsteed's not being a graduate of Oxford.

His observations on the great comet, extending from 22 Dec. 1680 to 15 Feb. 1681, were transmitted to Newton, and turned to account in the ‘Principia.’ He firmly held that they referred to the body already seen in November, which reappeared after passing the sun; while Newton believed that there were two comets, and only acknowledged his error in September 1685. His letter on the subject, however, shows no trace of the ‘magisterial ridicule’ which Flamsteed, in his subsequent ill-humour, declared had been thrown upon his opinion.

In a letter dated 10 Aug. 1691 Newton advised Flamsteed to print at once a preliminary catalogue of a few leading stars. But Flamsteed had large schemes in view which he could not bear to anticipate by partial publication, and importunities irritated without persuading him. Hence he drifted into a position of antagonism to his scientific contemporaries, which his infirmities of temper deplorably aggravated.

He attributed Newton's suggestion to the inimical influence of Halley [q. v.], of whom, in his reply, he spoke in rancorous terms. He never, it would seem, forgave him for indicating, in 1686, a mistake in his tide-tables (Phil. Trans. xvi. 192), and certainly did what he could to frustrate his hopes of the Savilian professorship in 1691. He disliked him besides for his ‘bantering’ manner, and rejected all efforts towards reconciliation.

Newton's resumption of his toil upon the lunar theory brought him into constant intercourse with the astronomer royal. ‘Sir Isaac,’ Flamsteed said afterwards, ‘worked with the ore he had dug.’ ‘If he dug the ore,’ Sir Isaac replied, ‘I made the gold ring’ (, Memoirs of Newton, ii. 178).

On 1 Sept. 1694 Newton visited the Royal Observatory, and Flamsteed, ‘esteeming him to be an obliged friend,’ explained the progress of his work, and gave him a hundred and fifty observed places of the moon with their tabular errors, for his private use in correcting the theory of her motions. He stipulated, however, that they should be imparted to no one else without his consent. Similar communications were repeated at intervals during sixteen months, not without chafings of spirit on both sides. Flamsteed was often ill, and always overworked; Newton was in consequence frequently kept waiting. There is evidence that he was occasionally kept waiting of set purpose; and his petulant letter of 9 July 1695 is largely excused by Flamsteed's admission that ‘I did not think myself obliged to employ my pains to serve a person that was so inconsiderate as to presume he had a right to that which was only a courtesy. And I therefore went on with my business of the fixed stars, leaving Mr. Newton to examine the lunar observations over again’ (, Flamsteed, p. 63). An offer of a pecuniary recompense for his communications was rejected with justifiable warmth; yet the consequence of their grudging bestowal probably was that Newton desisted in disgust from his efforts to complete the lunar theory (, Correspondence of Newton and Cotes, p. lxiv).

Flamsteed occasionally visited Newton in Jermyn Street after his appointment as warden of the mint, and found him civil, though less friendly than formerly. He, however, came to Greenwich on 4 Dec. 1698, and took away twelve lunar places.

In January 1694, on tabulating his observations of the pole-star, Flamsteed was surprised to find its polar distance always greater in July than in December. ‘ This is the first time, I am apt to think,’ he wrote, ‘that any real parallax hath been observed in the fixed stars.’ The apparent displacements noted by him were, in fact, caused by the aberration of light, the value of which his observations, discussed by Peters, gave, with a close approach to accuracy, as =20″.676 (, Hist. of Astron. p. 477). He might easily have perceived that they were of a different character from any attributable to annual parallax, as J. J. Cassini at once pointed out (Mém. de l'Ac. des Sciences, 1699, p. 177). Flamsteed's ‘Letter to Dr. Wallis on the Parallax of the Earth's Annual Orb’ was published, turned into Latin, in Wallis's ‘Opera Mathematica’ (iii. 701, 1699). It contained a paragraph, inserted for the purpose of refuting the charge of uncommunicativeness current against him, referring to the lunar data imparted to Newton. Newton obtained