Collected Works of Sir William Herschel

Abstract

I BEG to direct attention to a pressing need, namely, the publication of the collected works of Sir William Herschel. The investigations of this great man are practically inaccessible to the vast majority of modern astronomers, and the result is that few have any acquaintance with his writings, or know them only second-hand. In my relations with American astronomers I have met no one who has made a close study of Herschel's papers, and in going over them myself have been obliged to obtain them from distant libraries and abstract the contents by laborious processes. I have been equally impressed with the deep insight into the laws of nature which Herschel shows, and the slight extent to which his conclusions and methods are known to modern workers. Surely you will be willing to lend your voice to the praiseworthy task of awakening the British public to a national duty. When writing the life of Herschel for the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” thirty years ago, the late Prof. Pritchard directed attention to the necessity of the publication of Herschel's collected works; but meanwhile nothing has been done. Italy has published the collected works of Galileo, Holland the collected works of Huyghens, while France has published the collected works of several of her great mathematicians and astronomers, &c., as those of Lagrange, Laplace, Fourier, Fermat, &c., and now the Swiss, with commendable effort, are trying to publish the vast collected works of Euler.