Jeremiah Horrocks
Jeremiah Horrocks (1618 – 1641) is widely acknowledged as one of the founders of British astronomy.
Horrocks was barely into his teens when he entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Although he left without a degree three years later, he went on to demonstrate that the Moon moved around the Earth in an elliptical orbit and predict the 1639 transit of Venus.
Horrocks and his friend William Crabtree made the only observations of the event before he died suddenly from unknown causes at the start of January 1641.
