James Bradley

James Bradley FRS (March 1693 – July 13, 1762) is an English astronomer and serves as Astronomer Royal from 1742, succeeding Edmund Halley.

He is best known for two fundamental discoveries in astronomy, the aberration of light (1725–1728), and the nutation of the Earth's axis (1728–1748).

These discoveries are called "the most brilliant and useful of the century" by Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre, historian of astronomy, mathematical astronomer and director of the Paris Observatory, in his history of astronomy in the 18th century (1821), because "It is to these two discoveries by Bradley that we owe the exactness of modern astronomy.

....

This double service assures to their discoverer the most distinguished place (after Hipparchus and Kepler) above the greatest astronomers of all ages and all countries."

(J B Delambre, Histoire de l'astronomie au dix-huitième siècle (edited by Claude-Louis Mathieu, and published by Bachelier, Paris, 1827) (at pp.xvii, 413 and 420))

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