Sir John Herschel

Herschel was born on March 7, 1792 in Berkshire, England. He was a mathematician, atronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor. In 1816 he took up astronomy and built a reflecting telescope. He was presented with the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1826 and again in 1836. He was also presented with the Lalande Medal of the French Institute in 1885, in 1821 the Royal Society bestowed upon him the Copley Medal for his mathematical contributions. Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1831. Herschel and his wife's first photographs were of flowers in South Africa. Herschel used a camera lucida to obtain accurate outlines of the specimens and left the details to his wife. 112 of the 132 flower studies were collected and published as "Flora Herscheliana" in 1996. He made improvements in inventing the cyanotype process and variations like the chrysotype, the beginning of the modern blueprint process. He experimented with color reproduction, finding out that rays of different parts of the spectrum tended to impart their own color to a photographic paper. He got together with Henry Collen in the early 1840's, the portrait painter of Queen Victoria. Herschel originally discovered the platinum process on the basis of the light sensitivity of platinum salts, later developed by William Willis. Herschel added to the word photography. He applied the terms negative and positive to photography. He discovered sodium thiosulfate to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and told Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery that this "hyposulphite of soda" could be used as a photographic fixer , and make them permanent. His groun-breaking research was read at the Royal Society in London in March of 1839 and January 1840. Herschel died on May 11, 1871. Death is unknown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Herschel

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