FLAMSTEED, John, an eminent English astronomer, and the first who obtained the appointment of astronomerroyal, was born at Derby in the year 1646. He was educated at the free school of Derby, where he was head scholar at fourteen years of age, at which period his constitution, naturally delicate, sustained a severe trial by an attack of illness. When some of his companions went to the university, the state of his health prevented him from accompanying them. He afterwards met with a treatise De Sphaera, by Sacrobosco, a work which, being perfectly suited to the natural turn of his genius, he perused with uncommon satisfaction, translating as much of it into English as he thought could be necessary for him; and from the Astronomia Carolina: of Street he learned the method of calculating eclipses, and ascertaining the places of the planets. Mr Hatton, a mathematician, sent him Kepler’s Tabul(e Rudolphlnoe, and Riccioli’s Almagestum Novum, together with some other astronomical works to which he was as yet a stranger. In 1669 he calculated an eclipse of the sun, which had been omitted in the Ephemerides, together with five appulses of [7:9:614]the moon to fixed stars, and sent them to Lord Brouncker, then president of the Royal Society, who submitted them to the examination of that learned body, by whom they were greatly applauded, and Flamsteed received lettersorthanks from Mr Oldenburg the secretary, and from Mr John Collins, one of the members. In 1670, being invited by his father to come up to London, in order that he might become personally acquainted with his learned correspondents, he gladly accepted the invitation, and had an interview with Mr Oldenburg and Mr Collins, by the latter of whom he was introduced to Sir Jonas Moore, who became his warm friend and patron. In consequence of this journey he became acquainted with many astronomical instruments, and was presented with Townley’s micrometer by Sir Jonas Moore, who also assisted him in procuring glasses at a moderate rate for the construction of telescopes. On his way home he paid a visit to Dr Barrow and Mr, afterwards Sir Isaac Newton, at Cambridge, and entered himself as a student of Jesus College.

In the year 1672, he made large extracts from the letters of Gascoigne and Crabtree, by which his knowledge of dioptrics was much improved; and during the same year he made a number of celestial observations when the weather would permit, which were afterwards published in the Philosophical Transactions- In 1673 he composed a treatise on the true and apparent diameters of the planets, when at their greatest and least distances from the earth; a work from which even Newton himself did not scruple to borrow, and of which he made some use in his Principia in 1685. In 1674, Flamsteed published an Ephemeris, in which he exposed the folly and absurdity of astrology; and the same year he drew up a table of the tides for the use of the king, with an astronomical account of their ebbing and flowing, which Sir Jonas Moore assured him would be well received by his majesty. Sir Jonas received from Mr Flamsteed a pair of barometers, with directions how to use them, which he presented to the king and the duke of York, to whose notice he embraced every opportunity of introducing Mr Flamsteed.

Having taken the degree of master of arts at Cambridge, he formed the resolution of entering into holy orders, when Sir Jonas wrote to him to come to London, where he had an appointment for him very different from any in the church. But as Sir Jonas found that nothing could induce him to abandon the resolution he had formed, he obtained for him a situation which was perfectly consistent with the charac ter of a clergyman. This was the new office of astronomer to the king, with a salary of L.100 per annum. In Easter 1675, he received ordination at Ely-House by Bishop Gunning; and on the 10th of August the same year was laid the foundation stone of the royal observatory at Greenwich, which received the designation of Flamsteed-House, in honour of the first astronomer-royal. Till this edifice was erected, he made his observations in the queen’s house at Greenwich; and in 1681 Flamsteed’s Doctrine of the Sphere was published by Sir Jonas Moore in his System of the Mathematics. But notwithstanding his extraordinary merit, he never rose higher in the church than the living of Burslow in Surrey, although he was held in deserved estimation by the greatest men in the nation. He corresponded with Sir Isaac Newton, Dr Halley, Mr Molyneux, Dr Wallis, and many others; whilst Μ. Cassini and he commenced their respective discoveries with the utmost confidence and cordiality. But none of his works contributed so much to establish his fame as his Histοτiα Coelestis Britannica^ in three volumes folio. Mr Flamsteed was suddenly carried off by a stranguary, on the 31st of December 1719, having, notwithstanding the extreme delicacy of his constitution, and incessant labour, reached the seventy-third year of his age. "