Friedrich Wilhelm (William) Herschel (November 15, 1738 - August 25, 1822) Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel was born in Hannover (Germany) in 1738 as son of Issak Herschel (1707-1767), a musician in the regimental band of the Foot-Guards, and Anna Ilse (b. Moritzen). F.W. Herschel himself became also musician (an oboist) and joined his father and his brother Jacob in that band. In 1759, after experiencing the 1757 battle at Hastenbeck, he and Jacob went to England. Jacob returned to Hannover after two years, but Wilhelm (called William in England) stayed. After teaching music for some time, he became organist at Halifax in 1765, and organist and conductor at Bath in 1766. In 1772, William took home in Bath, and was joined by his sister Caroline. On May 10, 1773, at age 35, William Herschel purchased a copy of Ferguson's book, Astronomy, and found interest in astronomy. Consequently, he started to become a skilled maker of the most powerful telescopes of his time: After 1774, he had acquired skills to make specula mirrors superior to any which had been made before. Moreover, he started to observe the heavens; among his first objects, observed on the 4th of March, 1774, was the Orion Nebula. On March 13, 1781 William Herschel discovered what he first thought to be a comet, but was later found to be planet Uranus. In recognition of this discovery, he was elected to the Royal Society on December 7, 1781, and awarded an annual grant by King George III of England, which enabled him to give up his career in music (on May 19, 1782) and concentrate on astronomy as the Court Astronomer of the King. In 1783, Herschel published his observations leading to the discovery of the Solar Motion. He determined that our solar system is moving between the neighboring stars in the direction of the star Lambda Herculis; he introduced the term Solar Apex for this direction (W.H. 1783). In 1787, William Herschel discovered two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon. As the most renowned astronomer of his time, William Herschel contributed significantly to most branches of astronomy: He also investigated the proper motion of stars and derived the peculiar motion of the solar system toward the direction of constellation Hercules, modeled the Milky Way galaxy from stellar statistics, and speculated about the nature of the nebulae, including a discussion of the possibility of external island universes (galaxies) which had been brought up by Kant. He also contributed to physics (especially optics) and, e.g., discovered the infrared light.