Alexander Stewart Herschel | |
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Born | Feldhausen, near Cape Town, British Cape Colony (today South Africa) | 5 February 1836
Died | 18 June 1907 Slough, England | (aged 71)
Citizenship | United Kingdom |
Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge |
Spouse | None |
Scientific career | |
Fields | astronomy, physics |
Institutions | Royal School of Mines, Andersonian University, University of Durham |
Alexander Stewart Herschel, DCL, FRS (5 February 1836 – 18 June 1907) was a British astronomer.
Although much less well known than his grandfather William Herschel or his father John Herschel, he did pioneering work in meteor spectroscopy.[1][2] He also worked on identifying comets as the source of meteor showers.[3] The Herschel graph, the smallest non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graph, is named after Herschel due to his pioneering work on Hamilton's Icosian game.