Episode Details

Edmond Halley predicted the return of the comet that bears his name, but that famous prediction was just one line on an extraordinary résumé. He financed and edited Newton's Principia, captained a Royal Navy warship, mapped the magnetic field of the Earth, and invented actuarial life tables.

This episode reveals the full range of Halley's scientific adventures, from diving bells to demographic statistics, and explains why his work shaped fields as distant as insurance and geophysics.

• How Halley personally funded the publication of Newton's Principia
• His dangerous voyages to chart magnetic variation across the Atlantic
• The invention of life tables and their impact on modern insurance
• Why his comet prediction was a triumph of Newtonian physics