This stone cold fox was born in 1792, so he would have been a young buck at the time of the Regency. Son of well reputed astronomer Sir Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel, Sir John contributed to astronomy, chemistry, physics, and photography.
A Cambridge man, he invented a reflecting telescope just three years after matriculating. During his years at Cambridge, his co founding of the Analytical Society was widely credited with reviving mathematics in England by introducing continental European methods to British education.
After graduation, Herschel briefly entertained a career as a London solicitor, but quickly abandoned it to rejoin academia as tutor and maths examiner back in Cambridge.
Over the next fifteen years, Sir John would become one of the most popular and award winning British scientists, prompting an escape with his hottie wife Margaret Brodie to South Africa. There the couple produced botantical illustrations of Cape flora and fauna using a camera lucida to outline specimens which his wife would then fill in.
Over his life, Sir John made many contributions to science and modern life, inventing processes which would be foundations for photograph fixing, blueprints and coining the photographic terms of negative and positive.
When he retired at the age of 63, having fathered 12 children and held a variety of posts in different professions Herschel was able to continue devotion to science.
