Flamsteed, John 1646-1719
English astronomer

Born in Denby, near Derby, he was the only son of a maltster. Following early astronomical studies pursued privately and a spell at Cambridge (1671-74), he was appointed to a commission concerned with finding longitude at sea. The commission's report induced King Charles II to found a national observatory at Greenwich, which was built in 1675-76 with Flamsteed as director and first Astronomer Royal. With a salary of only �100, no assistant and imperfect instruments assembled at his own expense, he was in a difficult position until his private financial circumstances improved in the 1680s. He then acquired from an instrument-maker, Abraham Sharp, a mural arc with which he started an immense programme of stellar positional observations. Aiming at the highest possible accuracy, he was slow with the reductions of his observations, much to the annoyance of Isaac Newton who claimed that he needed them for the perfection of his lunar theory. After much commotion, the Historia Coelestis, embodying the first Greenwich star catalogue was printed in 1712 under the editorship of Edmond Halley. Flamsteed, denouncing the production as surreptitious, burnt 300 copies of it. He pressed for an adequate publication of his work, but died before its 1725 completion as the Historia Coelestis Britannica. Its three volumes were supplemented by the Atlas Coelestis, published by Abraham Sharp and Flamsteed's assistant Joseph Crosthwait in 1729.

Bibliography: Francis Baily, An Account of the Rev John Flamsteed and Supplement to the Account (1935)