Edmund Halley's Biography

Image: Edmund HalleyImage Credit: Halley Biography Edmund Halley (1656-1742) was a British Astronomer, who was the first to calculate a comet's orbit. He went to the University of Oxford, where he studied the theories of Sir Isaac Newton. Because he was so intrigued with these theories, it inspired him to write the Principle which he published with his own money in 1687. In 1721 he was made Astronomer Royal and began an 18 year study of the moon's complete revolution through its ascending and descending nodes. During his life he also wrote another important treatise called Astronomiae Cometicae Synopsis (Synopsis on Cometary Astronomy). It was started in 1682 and published in 1705. In this he mathematically demonstrated that comets move in a elliptic orbits around the sun and how over time they would pass the same point. He had such an accurate prediction that when the comet (now Halley's Comet) returned in 1758, it validated his theory.