Identity area
Type of entity
Authorized form of name
Parallel form(s) of name
Standardized form(s) of name according to other rules
Other form(s) of name
Sir John Frederick William Herschel
Identifiers for corporate bodies
Description area
Dates of existence
History
Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus – the seventh planet, discovered by his father Sir William Herschel.Herschel coined the term photography in 1839. Herschel was also the first to apply the terms negative and positive to photography. Herschel discovered sodium thiosulfate to be a solvent of silver halides in 1819, and informed Talbot and Daguerre of his discovery that this "hyposulphite of soda" ("hypo") could be used as a photographic fixer, to "fix" pictures and make them permanent, after experimentally applying it thus in early 1839.
Herschel's ground-breaking research on the subject was read at the Royal Society in London in March 1839 and January 1840.