William IV, Royal Society, King’s Medal, in gold, by William Wyon, bare-headed bust of William IV (after Chantrey) right, dated 1833 below, rev., standing figure of Sir Isaac Newton between his drawing of the planetary solar system and the 66th proposition of his Principia, edge engraved in serif capitals john frederick william herschel mdcccxxxiii, 73.7mm, 301.54g (B.H.M. 1655; Eimer 1271), a few edge and surface marks and scuffs from handling, good extremely fine and retaining original proof quality surfaces The citation for this, the first of the three Royal Society Royal Medals awarded to Sir John Herschel, reads:‘... for his Paper on the Investigation of the Orbits of Revolving Double Stars, inserted in the fifth volume of the memoirs of the Royal Astronomical Society’. Provenance: Glendining auction, 29 June 1951, lot 84. The following two lots in the sale comprised the other two Royal Society Gold Medals awarded to Sir John, in 1836 and 1840. It may be noted that ten further British, French and other gold medals, all awarded either to Sir John or to his father Sir William Herschel, were sold in another Glendining auction later in the year (30 October 1951, lots 87-96). Also ex Morton & Eden, 7 December 2022, lot 561. Sir John Frederick William Herschel, KH, FRS (1792-1871), astronomer, mathematician, chemist, inventor, botanist and philosopher was an extraordinary polymath. His early education was greatly stimulated by what amounted to his apprenticeship working not only with his celebrated German-born father, the astronomer Sir William Frederick Herschel (also KH, FRS, and recipient of the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1781), but also with his distinguished aunt, Sir William’s youngest sister Caroline Lucretia Herschel. As a boy John was particularly close to Caroline, who was herself to be honoured with the award of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal in 1828. At the unprecedentedly early age of 21, John Herschel was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and he was awarded his first Copley Medal before he was 30. Having decided to ‘take up star-gazing’ in 1816, he worked closely with his father on the discovery, measurement and observation of double stars. In 1820, with Sir William’s help, he built his own 20-foot telescope, an instrument which offered various improvements over the ‘Great’ 40-foot telescope Sir William had himself built in the 1780s under the patronage of King George III (and which is featured on the reverse of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Gold Medal). After Sir William’s death in 1822 John continued their work, to be recognised in due course by the award of the Royal Society Gold Medal offered here. In November 1833 he relocated himself, his family and his telescope to Feldhausen, near Cape Town, South Africa where he began a detailed scrutiny of the Southern Hemisphere sky, which had hitherto remained comparatively sparsely charted. During four years in South Africa, Herschel became involved in numerous diverse scientific activities and discussions. He and his wife Margaret, an accomplished artist, catalogued some 130 botanical specimens as recorded by his camera lucida drawings which she carefully coloured; essentially a private undertaking, this was to be published eventually as Flora Herscheliana. The Herschels also witnessed the return of Halley’s Comet in 1835 and were visited in early 1836 by Charles Darwin, returning from the Galapagos Islands in HMS Beagle. In the second sentence of Origin of Species Darwin would later identify Sir John Herschel, who had himself considered ‘the mystery of mysteries… …of the species question’, as ‘one of our greatest philosophers’. In sending Sir John a copy of Origin in 1859, Darwin wrote: ‘I cannot resist the temptation of showing… …the respect, & the deep obligation, which I owe to your Introduction to Natural Philosophy. Scarcely anything in my life made so deep an impression on me…’ Herschel’s extensive research and experimentation as a chemist included significant contributions to the nascent science of photography. He introduced the very terms ‘photography’, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ to the English language, invented the cyanotype (blueprint) process and is credited with the production of the first successful glass negative in 1839. He photographed the frame of his father’s 40-foot telescope before demolishing it, for safety reasons, late in 1839 and collaborated with Fox Talbot following their independent, but related, discoveries. In later years he himself was photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, whom he had first met in South Africa and who became a family friend. Despite having little or no administrative experience, Sir John Herschel accepted an offer to become Master of the Mint, a role which had been redefined as a salaried position, in December 1850. It was a difficult period of reform for the Royal Mint and the appointment did not prove to be a happy one. Herschel’s personal enthusiasm for pursuing decimalisation of the coinage (the ‘Godless’ florin, one-tenth of a pound, having just entered general circulation) did not bear fruit, and he himself was dogged by ill-health. He initiated important improvements to the standards of gold coinage before resigning in 1855 to resume his scientific work and research, including an new exploration of meteorology. He also found time to prepare and publish a hexameter translation of Homer’s Iliad, in 1865-66. Charles Darwin’s fulsome admiration of Sir John Herschel was not entirely reciprocated and Herschel made his criticisms of Darwin’s theory of evolution well-known, not least in his own Physical Geography, prepared for Encyclopedia Britannica in 1861. Following his death in 1871 Herschel was buried with great ceremony in Westminster Abbey near to Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb, with Darwin’s remains to be laid to rest, somewhat ironically, in the adjacent grave some 11 years later.

Estimate: GBP 40000 - 60000