In
that capacity Flamsteed was able to render material assistance to
Newton by providing him with the observations which his lunar theory
required.
John Flamsteed was born at Denby, in Derbyshire, on the 19th of
August, 1646. His mother died when he was three years old, and the
second wife, whom his father took three years later, only lived until
Flamsteed was eight, there being also two younger sisters. In his
boyhood the future astronomer tells us that he was very fond of those
romances which affect boy's imagination, but as he writes, "At twelve
years of age I left all the wild ones and betook myself to read the
better sort of them, which, though they were not probable, yet
carried no seeming impossibility in the picturing." By the time
Flamsteed was fifteen years old he had embarked in still more serious
work, for he had read Plutarch's "Lives," Tacitus' "Roman History,"
and many other books of a similar description. In 1661 he became ill
with some serious rheumatic affection, which obliged him to be
withdrawn from school. It was then for the first time that he
received the rudiments of a scientific education. He had, however,
attained his sixteenth year before he made any progress in
arithmetic. He tells us how his father taught him "the doctrine of
fractions," and "the golden rule of three"--lessons which he seemed
to have learned easily and quickly.
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