Astronomical Art & Artifact Alfred Russel Wallace and the RASC by R.A. Rosenfeld, RASC Archivist (
[email protected]) o year passes without some milestones of that a decade after Darwin’s death, the great popularizer Sir Robert particularly significant part of human culture we call Ball could even state that “Astronomers were thus the first N“science” being celebrated in a big way. Big ideas get big evolutionists, they have sketched out a majestic scheme of parties. Astronomy is decently endowed with such occasions. evolution for the whole solar system and now they are rejoiced The 1986 apparition of Halley’s Comet included a celebration to find that the great doctrine of Evolution has received an of Edmund Halley’s work, and, from the cometary proof of extension to the whole domain of organic life by the splendid Newtonian celestial mechanics, led to a year-long party hosted genius of Darwin [Lightman 2007, 413].” Ball’s words carried by his successors for themselves and for the shades of Halley, weight. Formerly the Astronomer Royal of Ireland, that same his friend Newton, and their admirers Delisle, Messier, and year he was appointed to succeed John Couch Adams in the others (gains for the history of astronomy are well presented in Lowndean Chair of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge Thrower et al. 1990). The 2004 transit of Venus commemorated University. At Cambridge he was a colleague of the other historical efforts through parallactic methods to determine professor of astronomy, Sir George Darwin, Plumian Professor and refine what we now know as the astronomical unit (AU), of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy, and second son of and honoured those who made the predictions, undertook Charles.