William Gascoigne (scientist)

William Gascoigne (1612 – 2 July 1644) was an English astronomer, mathematician and maker of scientific instruments from Middleton, Leeds who invented the micrometer and the telescopic sight.

Using the known pitch of the screw, and knowing the focal length of the lens producing the image, he could work out the size of the object, such as the Moon or the planets, to a hitherto unattainable degree of accuracy.

He wrote again to Gascoigne on 28 December 1640 saying, My friend Mr. Horrox professeth that little touch which I gave him hath ravished his mind quite from itself and left him in an Exstasie between Admiration and Amazement.

[5][4] In 1642, civil war broke out in England, and Gascoigne received a commission as Providore for Yorkshire in the army of King Charles I. Crabtree lived in Broughton, just outside Manchester which was on the parliamentary side and all correspondence between the two ceased.

They brought them to the attention of John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, who came to see Horrocks, Crabtree, and Gascoigne as the founding fathers of British research astronomy and the intellectual heirs of Galileo and Kepler.

[6] Many of Gascoigne's papers and correspondence were lost during the English Civil War and later in the Great Fire of London, but most of what is known to remain is kept in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford.

It was unveiled by David Sellers, who has written a biography of Gascoigne, who said: Although his name is known by astronomers, his role as a pioneer in precision astronomy deserves wider public recognition.