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The Sir John Herschel Collection
The preparation of the print Calendar of the Correspondence of Sir John Herschel (Michael J. Crowe ed., David R. Dyck and James J. Kevin assoc. eds, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998, viii + 828 pp) which was funded by the National Science Foundation, took ten years. It was accomplished by a team of seventeen professors, visiting scholars, graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and staff working at the University of Notre Dame.
The first online version of Calendar was created in 2009 by Dr Marvin Bolt and Steven Lucy, working at the Webster Institute of the Adler Planetarium, and it is that data that has now been reformatted for incorporation into Ɛpsilon.
Further information about Herschel, his correspondence, and the editorial method is available online here: http://historydb.adlerplanetarium.org/herschel/?p=intro
No texts of Herschel’s letters are currently available through Ɛpsilon.
Too busy to answer his last letter until now. His theorem on perspective is pretty and easy. Quotes one he uses. Has been busy finding the proof that every algebraic equation has a root. Has been organ tuning. Comments on the method of tuning using beats.
Congratulations and best wishes for JH's daughter recently married. If he has any material for the annual report, please send it.
Queries on what meridian the year began. Returned a book to the R.S.L., which had been away for many years. Believes the R.S.L. Library was expurgated between 1734 and 1740.
Further regarding the meridian on which the year began and various times throughout the world.
Regarding the recent eclipse of the sun. Has not been able to guess all his riddles.
Has examined the animalcules JH sent. Sends some of his own obtained from ink! Regarding the variations of spelling his own name.
Has not heard from him for a long time. Hopes all is well. Elizabeth Baily has had a stroke but is slowly mending. Arthur Baily has committed suicide. His own wife and children are at the seaside. Hopes JH or one of his daughters will write soon.
Sees that JH was the author of the article on mathematics in Brewster's Encyclopaedia. Comments on this and Isaac Newton's authorship of the notes and review of the Commercium Epistolicum.
JH keeps his astronomy right up to date. Regarding the significance of the word 'month' in legal phraseology. Gives two riddles.
Does not intend writing a life of Isaac Newton or G. W. Leibniz. Comments on the apparent delusions of Newton regarding other men's inventions.
Sending a query regarding JH's philosophy.
JH has turned round his question. Samuel Earnshaw has professed to have integrated the pipe equation. Gives an equation of his own.
Does not intend trying for the Lowndean Professorship. Hopes that JH has been asked to do a memoir of George Peacock. Hears he has been traveling about the country. Sends a riddle.
Regarding George Peacock and his mathematical work. Gives some of his own theories, which he intends publishing. Includes a riddle.
Would JH extract the dates from his memoir of George Peacock as AD must write something for the R.A.S. Encloses some meteorological queries.