Daniel Kirkwood

Theoretical and Mathematical Astronomer · (1814 - 1895)

• || Achievement

• Kirkwood was the first to suggest that meteor showers were actually debris from comets. He went on to identify the distance of planets to their rotations. This is called Kirkwood's Law.

• || Achievements made possible by
• Wanting to learn algebra led him to the York County Academy where he later becomes an instructor in Mathematics. His early years were spent very unhappily working as a farm boy, which led him to take up teaching at the age of nineteen at the local school. A student there desired to study Algebra, and together teacher and student studied the subject. The study made him keenly interested in mathematics.
• || Notable
• Devoted to theoretical and mathematical astronomy, his notable contribution to Astronomy was his study on the orbits of the asteroids and the gaps of their orbits around the sun.
• || Born
• September 27, 1814 to John Kirkwood and Agnes Hope in Hartford County, Maryland. Daniel Kirkwood is of Scotch Irish descent.
• || Education
• Daniel entered the York County Academy at York, Pennsylvania in 1834.