It’s Not a Bird…It’s Not a Plane… It’s Halley’s Comet – The Man and His Discovery

Halley’s Main Achievements

Halley learned Arabic by 1706. He started translating Apollonius’s Conics V-VII started by Edward Bernard from the copies found at the Bodleian and Leiden library.

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Photograph of Halley’s Comet in 1910. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/UIG via Getty Images)

He is also credited with converting the first four books from the original Greek initially started by the late David Gregory. Along with these, he published his own rewritten version of Book VIII in the first Latin edition in 1710. Halley was appointed as the Professor of Geometry at the University of Oxford. He received an honorary degree of doctor of laws in 1710. His most significant achievement was the comet sightings published in the synopsis of Astronomia Cometicae. He mentioned that the comet sightings of 1456, 1531, 1607 and 1682 were of the same comet and also predicted that it would be seen in 1758. Unfortunately, he died and could not witness his prediction to come true. The comet was named Halley’s Comet.

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