Nevil Maskelyne Biography

Nevil Maskelyne

Nevil Maskelyne as born on October 6, 1732 in London, England.  His father, Edmund Maskelyne of Purton ,Wiltshire died when Nevil was only 12 years old.  He left the family extremely poor.  Nevil attended Westminster School.  His mother died when he was 16 years of age, while he was still enrolled at Westminster.  After observing the eclipse of July 25, 1748, his passion for astronomy sparked.  He enrolled at St Catherine’s College, Cambridge in 1749 where he studied mathematics, and was ordained as a minister in 1755.  Being described as “well versed in mathematical learning and natural philosophy”, Maskelyne was admitted to the Royal Society in 1758.  The Royal Society is a fellowship of the world’s most eminent scientists. In 1785, Maskelyne married Sophia Rose of Cotterstock, Northamptonshire, and had his only child, Margaret, in 1786.  He died on February 9, 1811 at the age of 78.

Nevil Maskelyne was first despatched by the Royal Society in 1761 to the Island of St Helena.  Here he was to observe a transit of Venus.  His calculations were vital and needed to be very accurate, because they were to be used to calculate Earth’s distance from the Sun.  In turn, the scale of the solar system would be determined.  Maskelyne was unsuccessful in his observations because of bad weather, however he used his trip as a chance to experiment with determining longitude using the position of the moon.  When he returned to England, he immediately began writing a book.  In 1763, he published the lunar distance method for determining longitude in The British Mariner’s Guide. 

In 1764, Nevil Maskelyne took a voyage to Barbados to carry out trials of Harrison’s timepiece.  When he returned he was appointed Astronomer Royal and published the first volume of the Nautical Almanac in 1766. He continued to work on this project till his death. 

Maskelyne was awarded the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1775 for his work on determining the Earth’s density.  He carried out an experiment using a plumb line on the mountain Schiehallion in Perthshire, Scotland.  He computed that the Earth’s density is about 4.5 times water’s density.  

Some of Nevil Maskelyne’s other impressive work includes several practical improvements.  He was the first to come up with measurement of time to the tenths of a second!  He was also able to convince the government to replace John Bird’s mural quadrant, an angle measuring instrument, with a repeating circle.  The repeating circle was to be 6 feet in diameter.  Unfortunately, Maskelyne was not alive to see it completed.

Because of Nevil Maskelyne’s extreme passion and dedication to the science of astronomy, we have been able to progress greatly in the subject.  He was clearly a very large contributor to astronomy as we know it today.

Work Cited:

Dictionary of Scientific Biography, C. Gillispie, editor. Charles Scribner's Son. 1981.

"Nevil Maskelyne, Astronomer Royal." Pine Tree Web. Lewis P. Orans, 19 Sept. 2002. Web. 09 Jan. 2011. <http://pinetreeweb.com/bp-nevil-maskelyne.htm>.