14 HERSCHEL AND HIS WORK 



ignorant of, and seems to have taught some of his 

 children, was a knowledge of the starry heavens. 

 Caroline, who enjoyed little of her infirm father's 

 instruction and guidance, was sometimes taught by 

 him to recognise stars and constellations in the cloud- 

 less nights ; but the teaching then given was not seed 

 that fell on a good soil. With William it was different. 

 He was of an age and a disposition to be fascinated 

 by the subject, and the golden hopes which the science 

 at that time held out to astronomers must have 

 coloured the dreams of many a youthful star-gazer. 

 The British Government offered a great reward for 

 the best means of finding the longitude of a ship's 

 place at sea. A clockmaker might solve the problem 

 by ingenious contrivances, and win the reward; or 

 an astronomer, by more refined and more subtle 

 methods, might furnish the sailor with knowledge 

 and safety, and carry off the prize. William Herschel 

 was a boy of thirteen when a young mathematician, 

 almost self - taught, was appointed to a chair 

 in the Hanoverian University of Gottingen, not 

 forty miles from the town of Hanover. 1 It was John 

 Tobias Mayer, who taught there from 1751 till his 

 death in 1762, and whose widow got three thousand 

 pounds of the reward for the solution he left behind 

 him of the problem of the longitude. It is probable 

 enough that the name of this famous astronomer, 

 with whose writings Herschel became familiar in 



1 The favour with which Gottingen was regarded by George n., who 

 founded both University and Observatory, could not fail to exercise an 

 influence on Herschel and his father. In 1756 the King presented the 

 Observatory with a mural quadrant of six feet radius, made by Bird 

 of London. 



