[3][4][5] Philip Herbert Cowell was born in Calcutta, India on the 7 August 1870, and educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge.
[6] He became second chief assistant at the Royal Greenwich Observatory in 1896 and later became the Superintendent of HM Nautical Almanac Office between 1910 and 1930.
He also carefully studied the discrepancy that then existed between the theory and observation of the position of the Moon.
In 1909, he discovered 4358 Lynn, a 10-kilometer sized main-belt asteroid and member of the Eunomia.
[10][11] In 1910, for their work on Halley’s Comet Cowell and Andrew Crommelin jointly received the Prix Jules Janssen, the highest award of the Société astronomique de France, the French astronomical society and the Lindemann Prize of the Astronomische Gesellschaft.