HALLEY, EDMUND 0656-1742), English astronomer, was born in London, on Oct. 29, 1656. He was educated at St. Paul's school, London, and at Queen's college, Oxford. He studied astronomy in his schooldays, and in 1676 published a paper on the planetary orbits. Wishing to observe in the southern hemi sphere, he embarked for St. Helena in Nov. 1676. Here he cata logued 341 stars, observed a transit of Mercury, and made numerous pendulum observations. Upon his return to England he began a friendship with Newton, which resulted in the publica tion of the Principia, the expense of this work being borne by Halley. He observed the comet of 1682, calculated its orbit, and predicted its return in 1757, this being the first prediction of a comet's return ever made. (See COMET.) In 1703 he was appointed Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford and in 1720 he suc ceeded Flamsteed as astronomer-royal. Although in his 64th year, he undertook to observe the moon through an entire revolution of her nodes (18 years), and actually carried out his purpose. Hal ley also detected the proper motions of the stars the acceleration of the moon's mean motion, and the long inequality of Jupiter and Saturn; and indicated first in 1679, and again in 1716, Phil. Trans., No. 348, a method extensively used in the 18th and I 9th centuries for determining the solar parallax by means of the transits of Venus. He died on Jan. 14, 1742.
His principal works are Catalogus stellarum australium (Lon don, 1679), the substance of which was embodied in vol. iii. of Flamsteed's Historia coelestis (1725); Synopsis astronomiae cometicae (Oxford, 1705) ; Astronomical Tables (London, 1752) ; also 81 miscellaneous papers of considerable interest, scattered through the Philosophical Transactions. To these should be added his version from the Arabic (which language he acquired for the purpose) of the treatise of Apollonius De sectione rations, with a restoration of his two lost books De sectione spatii, both pub lished at Oxford in 1706; also his fine edition of the Conics of Apollonius, with the treatise by Serenus De sectione cylindri et coni (Oxford, 1710, folio). His edition of the Spherics of Mene laus was published by his friend Costard in 1758.
See also Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. (1757) ; J. Aubrey, Lives, ii.; F. Baily, Account of Flamsteed; R. Grant, History of Astronomy; A. J. Rudolph, Bulletin of Bibliography, No. 14 (Boston, 1904) ; E. F. McPike, "Bibliography of Halley's Comet," Smithsonian Misc. Col lections (1905) ; Notes and Queries, gth series, vols. x. xi. xii., loth series, vol. ii. (E. F. McPike) . A collection of manuscripts regarding Halley is preserved among the Rigaud papers in the Bodleian library.