Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley (1656–1742) was an English astronomer, mathematician, and natural philosopher whose name attaches to the periodic comet whose return he correctly predicted. Born in Haggerston near London to a prosperous soap-maker, he entered Queen's College, Oxford, and left before taking a degree to sail to Saint Helena, where he produced the first detailed catalog of southern-hemisphere stars from a European observatory.

Returning to England, he was elected to the Royal Society in 1678 and became a central figure in late-seventeenth-century English science. He visited Isaac Newton in Cambridge in 1684, drew out his work on planetary motion, and personally financed and edited the publication of Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, a book that would not have appeared without his intervention.

In A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets (1705), Halley argued that bright comets seen in 1531, 1607, and 1682 were a single body returning on a roughly 76-year orbit, and predicted its next appearance around 1758. The comet returned on schedule, sixteen years after his death, and has carried his name since.

He also produced the first published meteorological chart of the trade winds, an actuarial life table from Breslau parish records used in early life-insurance mathematics, and magnetic survey charts of the Atlantic. He served as Astronomer Royal from 1720 until his death.

The given name Edmond is the French form of Edmund, from Old English ead, meaning prosperity, and mund, meaning protection, though Halley himself often signed Edmund. The surname Halley derives from English place-names containing Old English healh, a nook or hollow, and leah, a clearing. He used both spellings in his lifetime.