Talk:John Herschel

Calendar
The reference for his proposal for leap year correction is in his publication "Outlines of Astronomy" Outlines of Astronomy by John Herschel Dbfirs (talk) 10:35, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * So why didn't you put the reference in the article? Dicklyon (talk) 17:10, 7 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I fixed it better. Dicklyon (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Blueprints
Cyanotype is not the "precursor to the modern blueprint" process, it is the modern blueprint, unchanged. Dr. Mike Ware created a modified version of cyanotype, called 'New Cyanotype', but as it uses highly toxic chromates, it is not preferred for industrial use. One of the benefits of cyanotype is that it is so harmless, unless, of course, if you heat the undeveloped, dried chemistry, in which case cyanide gas is released.

Juicifer451 (talk) 10:46, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Eton
John Herschel is said to have studied at Eton. Actually, he was only there shortly, leaving after a few months after being bullied. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.167.246.75 (talk) 10:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

New photos
I uploaded three new photos of John Herschel by Julia Margaret Cameron, below, including one that's a full version of the current lead image. Feel free to use if useful. Dcoetzee 18:07, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Jewish?
Herschel is an extremely common German Jewish name. Is it possible he had Jewish ancestry? It is not an impossible assumption, but is it unlikely? 81.154.10.119 (talk) 23:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC) See the article on William, which implies that John Herschel was one quarter. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.171.194 (talk) 13:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Hundreds of millions of Christians have Jewish ancestry. Is that somehow significant or important? According to Jewish law, it's important only if his mother was Jewish, Otherwise it's just minor fluff and doesn't belong in the article. Santamoly (talk) 06:48, 13 August 2012 (UTC)
 * All of Herschels are ethnic Jews. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:D1:27FF:1E8B:E859:9E9B:DD43:BB62 (talk) 15:15, 4 July 2018 (UTC)
 * There were members of the SS with the last names Hirsch, Hirschel, Herschel, and Hersche, they’re by no means exclusively Jewish last names, they have their origins in German. Gold, Goldberg, and even Weinstein can be ethnic German last names. 2600:1700:DAE0:1AA0:7D1E:AD5A:419E:5B31 (talk) 17:46, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It's possible he had some pretty distant Jewish ancestry through his father but all his fathers known ancestors were baptised Christians. So the theory that he MIGHT HAVE had some distant Jewish ancestry is again possible but not verified and is only speculation until someone does more research on it. So I'm removing the Czech-Jewish ancestry tag. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:69C1:2A00:458F:9BB5:9AB7:6302 (talk) 21:53, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

File:Julia Margaret Cameron - John Herschel (Metropolitan Museum of Art copy, restored).jpg
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Julia Margaret Cameron - John Herschel (Metropolitan Museum of Art copy, restored).jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on March 26, 2014. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2014-03-26. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. Thanks! — Crisco 1492 (talk) 00:11, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

New photos on Commons from the Royal Society Library
As part of WikiProject Royal Society a special photo session in the Royal Society Library in London has resulted in Commons:Category:Royal Society Library, with over 50 photos of their treasures, mostly 17th century manuscripts, including several of Herschel's correspondence with Charles Babbage, Charles Blagden's diaries, the 1st edn of Sylva, by John Evelyn, one of the early minute books, Robert Boyle's notebooks etc, the manuscript fair copy of Newton's Principia etc. Please add these as appropriate. Thanks! Wiki at Royal Society John (talk) 22:05, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Photo on glass
Due credit for Herschel's 1839 photograph on glass has now been added, my motivation being the increasingly widespread erroneous claim made for Janez Puhar as "the inventor of photography on glass". Googling turns up plenty of references to Herschel's photo, a few nicely illustrated, but a superficial rummaging through them for a suitable cit has proven problematic. Either they're in blog form (albeit institutional blogs), or make the same error as Puhar partisans by calling it the first photo on glass (Niepce and Daguerre had already made some -- Herschel himself mentions one example in an early 1839 letter to Talbot reporting on his visit to Daguerre in Paris), or describe it as a negative (the image is a deposit of metallic silver on the glass and, like a daguerreotype or ambrotype, its appearance as a positive or negative depends on the lighting and background). Can anyone help out by inserting a nice clean cit after one of the commas? AVarchaeologist (talk) 19:03, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on John Herschel. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070510211707/http://www.nahste.ac.uk/isaar/GB_0237_NAHSTE_P0327.html to http://www.nahste.ac.uk/isaar/GB_0237_NAHSTE_P0327.html
 * Added tag to http://assa.saao.ac.za/resource/Chronology4.doc.

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 23:32, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Admiralty manual
The manual on scientific enquiry for naval officers(and others) that Herschel edited at the behest of the Admiralty and that included chapters by, e.g., Charles Darwin, Richard Owen, Hooker, Beechey, Sabine & al. may be the most influential book Herschel is known for, yet it is not mentioned in the text and only listed in the bibliography without a Wiki reference (there isn't any entry -- why not?).--Death Bredon (talk) 19:45, 10 September 2019 (UTC)