Thomas Wright (astronomer)

Thomas Wright (1711 - 1786) was an English astronomer, mathematician, instrument maker, architect and garden designer. He was the first to describe the shape of the Milky Way and speculate that faint nebulae were distant galaxies.

Life and Works

Wright was born at Byers Green in County Durham. In 1730 he set up a school in Sunderland, where he taught mathematics and navigation. He later moved to London to work on a number of projects for his wealthy patrons. (This was before retiring to County Durham and building a small observatory at Westerton.

Wright is best known for his publication "An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe" (1750), in which he explains the appearance of the Milky Way as "an optical effect due to our immersion in what locally approximates to a flat layer of stars." This idea was taken up and elaborated by Immanuel Kant in his "Universal Natural History and Theory of Heaven". Another of Thomas Wright's ideas, which is also often attributed to Kant, was that many faint nebulae are actually incredibly distant galaxies. Thomas Wright wrote:cquote|..the many cloudy spots, just perceivable by us, as far without our Starry regions, in which tho' visibly luminous spaces, no one star or particular constituent body can possibly be distinguished; those in all likelyhood may be external creation, bordering upon the known one, too remote for even our telescopes to reach. [quoted from "An original theory or new hypothesis of the universe" by Freeman Dyson, "Disturbing the Universe", 1979, pg 245, ISBN 0330263242]

Garden design

Wright has been credited with work for the Earl of Halifax at Horton House.

Thomas Wright was also credited with expanding the Grand Orrery to include Saturn.

References