Jeremiah Horrocks (1618 – 3 January 1641), sometimes given as Jeremiah Horrox (the Latinised version that he used on the Emmanuel College register and in his Latin manuscripts), was an English astronomer. He was the first person to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit and was the only person to predict the transit of Venus of 1639, an event which he and his friend William Crabtree were the only two people to observe and record. His treatise on the transit, Venus in sole visa, was almost lost to science due to his early death and the chaos brought about by the English civil war, but for this and his other work he has since been hailed as the father of British astronomy.
Read more about Jeremiah Horrocks: Early Life and Education, Astronomical Observations, Lunar Research, Transit of Venus, Death and Remembrance
Famous quotes containing the word jeremiah:
“Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, There is a man child conceived.”
—Bible: Hebrew Job, 3:3.
A similar imprecation is found in Jeremiah 20:14-15.