John Pond

Pond's father made a fortune as a London merchant, enabling young John to enter Trinity College, Cambridge in 1784 at the age of sixteen.

[2] In 1800 Pond settled at Westbury near Bristol, and began to determine star-places with a fine altitude and azimuth circle of 2+1⁄2 feet (760 mm) in diameter by Edward Troughton.

[3] He published eight folio volumes of Greenwich Observations, translated Pierre-Simon Laplace's Système du monde and contributed thirty-one papers to scientific collections.

[4] On the summit of the hill is an obelisk made of granite and bearing the following inscription:[5] This pillar was erected in 1824 under the direction of the Reverend John Pond, MA, Astronomer Royal.

John Pond died in Blackheath, London in the year of his 69th birthday and was buried beside and near fellow Astronomers Royal Edmond Halley and Nathaniel Bliss, respectively, in the churchyard of St Margaret's in nearby Lee.