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Life and Works
This obscurity did not long continue. The news spread quickly from fashionable Bath to London. On the 6th of December, 1781, Herschel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, to which he was formally "admitted" May 30, 1782. He was forty-three years old.
He also received the Copley medal in 1781 for his "discovery of a new and singular star."[1]
... "He was now frequently interrupted by visitors who were introduced by some of his resident scholars, among whom I remember Sir Harry Engelfield, Dr. Blagden, and Dr. Maskelyne. With the latter he
- ↑ At the presentation Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, said: "In the name of the Royal Society I present to you this gold medal, the reward which they have assigned to your successful labors, and I exhort you to continue diligently to cultivate those fields of science which have produced to you a harvest of so much honor. Your attention to the improvement of telescopes has already amply repaid the labor which you have bestowed upon them; but the treasures of the heavens are well known to be inexhaustible. Who can say but your new star, which exceeds Saturn in its distance from the sun, may exceed him as much in magnificence of attendance? Who knows what new rings, new satellites, or what other nameless and numberless phenomena remain behind, waiting to reward future industry and improvement?"
