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John Bevis (10 November 1695 in
Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...
,
Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
– 6 November 1771) was an
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
doctor, electrical researcher and
astronomer An astronomer is a scientist in the field of astronomy who focuses their studies on a specific question or field outside the scope of Earth. They observe astronomical objects such as stars, planets, moons, comets and galaxies – in either ...
. He is best known for discovering the
Crab Nebula The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus. The common name comes from William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who observed the object in 1842 u ...
in 1731. He was educated at
Christ Church, Oxford Christ Church ( la, Ædes Christi, the temple or house, '' ædēs'', of Christ, and thus sometimes known as "The House") is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1546 by King Henry VIII, the college is uniq ...
, being awarded his B.A. in 1715 and his M.A. in 1718. In 1757 Bevis published in London a volume on ''The History and Philosophy of Earthquakes'' in which he collected accounts of the
1755 Lisbon earthquake The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon earthquake, impacted Portugal, the Iberian Peninsula, and Northwest Africa on the morning of Saturday, 1 November, Feast of All Saints, at around 09:40 local time. In combination with ...
from diverse authentic sources. His survey, the first of its kind, was subsequently used by
John Michell John Michell (; 25 December 1724 – 21 April 1793) was an English natural philosopher and clergyman who provided pioneering insights into a wide range of scientific fields including astronomy, geology, optics, and gravitation. Considered ...
(1761). In 1757 Bevis was asked by the tobacconist Thomas Hughes to discover why no flowers would grow in his garden at Bagnigge House, which stood in the vicinity of 61–63 King's Cross Road, London. He found the water from the well on the site to be full of iron. On this research, a second well was dug, the water from which was found to be a good purgative. This led to the establishment of one of the most popular 18th-century spas, Bagnigge Wells, the following year. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathemati ...
in November, 1765.


Electrical research

When the
Leyden jar A Leyden jar (or Leiden jar, or archaically, sometimes Kleistian jar) is an electrical component that stores a high-voltage electric charge (from an external source) between electrical conductors on the inside and outside of a glass jar. It ty ...
first arrived in the UK (1746), Bevis worked with William Watson in refining it. They removed the water and replaced it with lead shot, then later lined the inside and exterior of the glass with lead. They also experimented to determine the speed of electricity using nearly four kilometers of wire and observing the spark made on entering the wire, and that made on leaving it: they could not detect any time delay and concluded it must be almost instantaneous. Watson and Bevis corresponded extensively with
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading int ...
and his group of Philadelphia experimenters and they jointly: refined the Leyden jar by coating the inside and outside with tin foil; joined Leyden jars together to create a "battery"; distinguished between the charge in Leyden jars linked in series from those linked in parallel; created a flat glass-plate and tin-foil version of the Jar battery (the first flat-plate condensor); developed the single-fluid theory of electricity which emphasised a superabundance of the fluid on one side, and a deficit on the other; introduced the concept of positive and negative charges.


Astronomer

Besides discovering the Crab Nebula (M1, when it got listed decades later in Messier's catalogue), Bevis also observed an
occultation An occultation is an event that occurs when one object is hidden from the observer by another object that passes between them. The term is often used in astronomy, but can also refer to any situation in which an object in the foreground blocks ...
by
Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...
of Mercury on 28 May 1737 NS, (17 May 1737 OS) and observed and found a prediction rule for eclipses of
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but slightly less than one-thousand ...
's moons. Besides discovering the Crab Nebula, Bevis is known for his proposal to compile a modern British star atlas, ''Uranographia Britannica''. The first mention was in an advertisement in the '' Northampton Mercury'' of 11 April 1748 notifying that subscribers could obtain copies of the atlas when finished. ''Uranographia'' was based on Flamsteed's star positions, published posthumously in 1725 as ''Historia Coelestis Britannica'', a catalogue of 2,935 stars, together with additional stars from Bevis’s own observations made between 1738 and 1739 from Stoke Newington. In 1731, Bevis had been the first to notice what we now call the Crab Nebula (Messier 1). ''Uranographia Britannica'' was the first of the "classical" star atlases to include non-stellar objects. In 1750, as the atlas was still in the process of being compiled, Bevis's publisher, John Neale was declared bankrupt, the copper plates sequestered by the London Courts of Chancery and the project terminated. Uranographia Britannica was never published. In 1785, long after the death of Neale and of Bevis, Bevis's library was auctioned by the widow of his executor, James Horsfall F.R.S. According to the auction catalogue, three near-complete atlases were sold together with an unknown number of star charts that were later compiled into an unknown number of atlases and offered for sale anonymously in 1786 as ''Atlas Celeste'', essentially to use up the existing stock of pre-printed star charts. It is this atlas which forms the bulk of the currently identified Bevis atlases but unlike ''Uranographia Britannica'' that Bevis intended to have explanatory notes and catalogues, ''Atlas Celeste'' does not. Of the three, nearly-finished, ''Uranographia Britannica'', one was bought at the Sotheby & Wilkinson sale, London, 21 January 1856, by the
American Philosophical Society The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
, Philadelphia. This APS copy is the atlas on which Ashworth based his 1981 seminal description. Another is at
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. In poor condition and dirty, it is not as complete as the APS atlas. The third and last atlas sold at auction in 1785 was identified in November 2011
y Kilburn Y, or y, is the twenty-fifth and penultimate letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. According to some authorities, it is the sixth (or seventh ...
in the
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's Collection at
Chatsworth House Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the Cavendish family since 1549. It stands on the east bank of the ...
, Derbyshire. In good condition it is second only to the APS atlas, having fewer descriptive notes to accompany the star charts. All three copies of Bevis’s intended Uranographia have now been identified. We also know the whereabouts 022of twenty-seven of the twenty-nine described copies of Atlas Celeste; most are in the UK or USA. Two are missing, presumed to be in private collections. Examination of currently known Atlas Celestes that do not have the intended full set of 51 star charts suggests that the compiler was running out of them. Other than that at
Lund University library Lund University Libraries is a network of public research libraries in Lund, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom o ...
, Sweden, none has yet been identified elsewhere in continental Europe. There are two copies in Australia. The
Manchester Astronomical Society The Manchester Astronomical Society is an organisation that promotes popular and amateur astronomy in North West England. It is one of the oldest provincial astronomical societies in England. The Society is based in the Godlee Observatory loca ...
(U.K.; an amateur society) has a website for the Bevis star charts at https://www.manastro.org/bevis.html. Member Kevin Kilburn keeps an updated list of bound and unbound Bevis plates and atlases at: https://www.manastro.org/bevis/IDENTIFIED_Uranographia_sets_SEPTEMBER_2020.pdf


Personal

Bevis died in 1771 as a result of falling off his telescope.Barrow, John D. (2008). ''Cosmic Imagery: Key Images in the History of Science.'' Random House. p. 45. ISBN 978-0-224-07523-7.


References


External links


Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 04, Bevis, JohnList of fellows of the RASThe story of Bagnigge Wells''Uranographia Britannica'', ca. 1745
- Full digital facsimile, Linda Hall Library.


Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bevis, John 1693 births 1771 deaths Crab Nebula People from Salisbury 18th-century British astronomers Fellows of the Royal Society