John GoodrickeFRS (17 September 1764 – 20 April 1786) was an English amateurastronomer. He is best known for his observations of thevariable starAlgol (Beta Persei) in 1782.
After leaving Warrington, Goodricke returned to live with his parents inYork. There, he became friends with his neighbourEdward Pigott, whose fatherNathaniel Pigott had built a sophisticated privateobservatory. Edward was already interested in variable stars and gave Goodricke a list of those that he thought were worthy of observation.
Although several stars were already known to vary inapparent magnitude, Goodricke was the first to propose a mechanism to account for this. He suggested that Algol is what is now known as aneclipsing binary. He presented his findings to theRoyal Society in May 1783, and for this work, the Society awarded him theCopley Medal for that year. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on 16 April 1786. He never learned of this honour however, as he died four days later from pneumonia.[4] He never married.
Today there is a marker in York near the site of John Goodricke's observatory.
In 1949, Sidney Melmore[6] showed that Goodricke worked from theTreasurer's House (now owned by theNational Trust) very nearYork Minster, and concluded that he had observed from the north window of the top floor of the south-east wing, looking south towards the Minster. However, records indicate that the Goodricke family had rented rooms fromEdward Topham, the then owner of the northwest wing of the house.[7]
The University of York has a Goodricke College named after John Goodricke.[9]
TheGoodricke-Pigott Observatory is a private astronomical observatory in Tucson, Arizona, named after both Goodricke and Pigott. It was formally dedicated on 26 October 1996.[10]
