Jeremiah Horrocks and New England – by Mike Frost

---

Jeremiah Horrocks and New England - a talk by Mike Frost

Jeremiah Horrocks, the first person to predict and then see a transit of Venus, also wrote several papers on other aspects of astronomy.

In one of his papers he wrote about a method - known since antiquity - of calculating longitude by timing lunar eclipses at two separate locations. One of his observers, un-named, was located in "Aquedniek" in New England. Who might it have been? Horrocks biographers have suggested candidates. In this talk I present a new candidate for Horrocks's New England correspondent.

I also tell the extraordinary story of the colonisation of Aquidneck, now part of Rhode Island, by a fanatical sect led by the formidable Anne Hutchinson. In the first half of the seventeenth century, followers of Puritan persuasion were persecuted for their "back to basics" beliefs. Some Puritans, like Jeremiah Horrocks, chose to lead their lives quietly in England, but many others emigrated to the colonies of the New World, where they practised their faith in the frontier lands of the American colonies.

A tale of scientific observation in the most unlikely of locations.

Next talk A Warwickshire Eclipse

Click to return to Mike Frost's Home Page