Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley (1656-1742) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist who served as England's second Astronomer Royal from 1720 until his death. Halley is best remembered for applying Isaac Newton's laws of motion to historical records of comet sightings, correctly concluding that the comets observed in 1531, 1607 and 1682 were the same object following a predictable orbit around the Sun. He predicted the comet's return in 1758, a forecast confirmed after his death that led to the object being named Halley's Comet in his honor and stands as an early, dramatic proof of Newtonian physics' predictive power. Beyond cometary studies, Halley compiled one of the first accurate star catalogues of the southern hemisphere sky, discovered the proper motion of stars, made pioneering contributions to actuarial science through his study of mortality statistics, and encouraged and personally funded the publication of Newton's Principia Mathematica.