At the Royal Observatory on a bright, sunny day in 2004, gaggles of tourists, drawn from London by riverboat ride on the Thames from the Millennium Bridge or by rail through the docklands, straddle the prime meridian. The world’s starting and finish line seems to have an almost magnetic attraction for them. To this student of Halley’s adventures, the longitude marker conjures a mixture of both his failed and successful quests. It was his quest to solve the problem of longitude that drew him to the Royal Observatory during his undergraduate days—and that quest on which he would write one of his final papers and continue working to the end of his life. He used an array of methods to calculate it; some were more dependable than others. His lunar approach, of course, proved impractical in the long haul. While his work may have come close to providing a workable method in his lifetime, he never personally staked a claim to the longitude prize.
The great thing about science is that negative discoveries can be transformative, and his enhancement of the world grid’s magnetic
accuracy was a critical stage in an ongoing process. Indeed, his quest for knowledge through wide and open collaboration is a model for today. In time his other contributions to the world of science would overshadow much of his purely astronomical work, though it would be the comet that would immortalize his name.
Here, I see the Latin inscription on the capstone of his tomb, which was moved to Greenwich in 1845 and inlaid in a wall of a building connected to the actual observatory. It reads in translation:
Under this marble peacefully rests, with his beloved wife, Edmond Halley, L.L.D. unquestionably the greatest astronomer of his age. But to conceive an adequate knowledge of the excellencies of this great man, the reader must have recourse to his writings, in which all the sciences are in the most beautiful and perspicacious manner illustrated and improved. As when living he was so highly esteemed by his countrymen, gratitude requires that his memory should be respected for posterity. To the memory of the best of parents their affectionate daughters have erected this monument in the year 1742.
Halley’s corpse still rests below a now-obscure slab in a cemetery in what now belongs to a London suburb. His grave outside the parish church of Lee is unkempt. Although the capstone of his tomb is now prominently displayed at the Greenwich Observatory, some view the initial stature of Halley’s grave as one last rebuff by the Church of England.
Halley has since been honored in myriad ways. A crater was named for him on the Moon, at 8 degrees south and 6 degrees west, as was the Royal Society’s permanent scientific base in Antarctica. It was named Halley Bay in 1957. A bronze memorial in the shape of a comet was erected at Westminster Abbey, London’s Who’s Who of shrines, on November 13, 1986, to culminate celebrations of his comet’s most recent return.