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 Sciences, vii. 125) that ‘his results in pure geometry, though the fruits only of leisure moments, would alone suffice to secure him a distinguished place in scientific history.’ Besides his important restorations of ancient authors, he investigated the properties of the loxodromic curve, and first solved the problem to describe a conic section of which the focus and three points are given. He furnished an improved construction for equations of the third and fourth degrees (''Phil. Trans''. xvi. 335); his universal theorem for finding the foci of object-glasses (ib. xvii. 960) appeared originally as an appendix to Molyneux's ‘Dioptricks’ (1692); and his account of the relations of weather to barometrical fluctuations was included by Cotes in his ‘Hydrostatical Lectures’ (2nd ed. 1747, p. 246). His papers on the ‘Analogy of the Logarithmic Tangents to the Meridian Line’ and on ‘A compendious Method of Constructing Logarithms’ were reprinted in Baron Maseres's ‘Scriptores Logarithmici’ (vol. ii. 1791). The ‘Miscellanea Curiosa,’ edited by Halley in 1708 (in 3 vols.), was largely composed of his contributions to the ‘Philosophical Trans.’ His ‘Journal’ during his two voyages, 1698–1700, was published in 1775 by Dalrymple in his ‘Collection of Voyages in the South Atlantic’; and a number of interesting letters addressed by him to Josiah Burchett, secretary to the admiralty, are preserved at the Record Office (under the heading ‘Captains' Letters, 1698–1700’). His ‘Southern Catalogue’ was reprinted, with notes and a preface by Baily, in the thirteenth volume of the Royal Astronomical Society's ‘Memoirs’. Dr. Gill recognised in 1877 the foundations of his observatory at St. Helena (see, Six Months in Ascension, p. 33).

Lalande styled Halley ‘the greatest of English astronomers,’ and he ranked next to Newton among the scientific Englishmen of his time. Of eighty-four papers inserted by him in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ a large proportion expounded in a brilliant and attractive style theories or inventions opening up novel lines of inquiry and showing a genius no less fertile than comprehensive. ‘While we thought,’ wrote M. Marian, ‘that the eulogium of an astronomer, a physicist, a scholar, and a philosopher comprehended our whole subject, we have been insensibly surprised into the history of an excellent mariner, an illustrious traveller, an able engineer, and almost a statesman.’

[Several abortive attempts have been made to write a complete biography of Halley. Mr. Israel Lyons of Cambridge was, in 1775, interrupted in the task by death in 1775. Professor Rigaud of Oxford had much more extensive collections (deposited after his death in 1839 in the Bodleian Library), which still await an editor. The chief sources of information at present are: Biog. Brit. vol. iv. (1757), where the substance of manuscript memoirs imparted by Halley's son-in-law, Mr. Henry Price, is communicated; Mairan's ‘Éloge,’ in Mémoires de l'Acad. des Sciences, Paris, 1742 (Histoire, p. 182), translated in Gent. Mag. xvii. 455, 503; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. (Bliss), iv. 536; Wood's Fasti Oxon. ii. 368; Aubrey's Lives of Eminent Men, ii. 365; Thomson's Hist. R. Society, pp. 207, 335; Rigaud, in Bradley's Miscellaneous Works (see Index); Memoirs R. Astr. Society, ix. 205; Monthly Notices, iii. 5, vi. 204; Philosophical Mag. viii. 219, 224 (1836); Baily's Account of Flamsteed, pp. xxxi, 193, 213, 747; Hutton's Mathematical Dict. 1815; Brewster's Life of Newton; Grant's Hist. of Phys. Astronomy, p. 477 and passim; Whewell's Hist. of the Inductive Sciences; Phil. Trans. Abridg. (Hutton), ii, 326 (1809); H. Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 291; Lysons's Environs, iv. 504, 509; Nature, xxi. 303 (Halley's Mount); Walford's Insurance Cyclopædia, v. 616; Graetzer's E. Halley und Caspar Neumann (Breslau, 1883); Poggendorff's Hist. de la Physique (1883), p. 436 and passim; Montucla's Hist. des Mathématiques, iv. 50, 308; Bailly's Hist. de l'Astr. Moderne, ii. 432; Delambre's Hist. de l'Astr. au XVIIIe Siècle, p. 116; Lalande's Préface Historique aux Tables de Halley (1759); Delisle's Lettres sur les Tables de Halley (1749); Wolf's Geschichte der Astronomie; Mädler's Gesch. der Himmelskunde; Cunningham's Lives of Eminent Englishmen, iv. 453; Nichols's Illustr. of Lit. iv. 22, 33; The Observatory, iii. 348 (Oliver), viii. 429 (Lynn); Mailly's Annuaire de l'Observatoire de Bruxelles, 1864, p. 305; Addit. MS. 4222, f. 177; Egerton MSS. 2231, f. 186, 2334 C. 2. Many unpublished letters from Halley to Sir Hans Sloane and others are preserved in the Guard Book and Letter Books of the Royal Society.] 

HALLEY, ROBERT, D.D. (1796–1876), nonconformist divine and historian, the eldest of four children of Robert Hally (sic), was born at Blackheath, Kent, on 13 Aug. 1796. His father, originally a farmer at Glenalmond, Perthshire, of the ‘antiburgher’ branch of the secession church, had married as his first wife Ann Bellows of Bere Regis, Dorsetshire, and settled at Blackheath as a nurseryman. Halley received most of his early education at Maze Hill school, Greenwich, and in 1810 began life in his father's business. His mind being drawn towards the ministry, he entered (18 Jan. 1816) the Homerton Academy under John Pye Smith, D.D., and remained there six years. Among his fellow-students was William Jacobson [q. v.], afterwards bishop of Chester. Halley's first charge was the pastor-