Arthur Storer

Arthur Storer (1645 to 1687) was a pioneering astronomer in colonial British America, remembered chiefly for his association and correspondence with Isaac Newton. He was born in Buckminster, Leicestershire, England, and grew up in Grantham, Lincolnshire, where his widowed mother married the apothecary William Clarke, in whose household the young Newton lodged while attending The King's School. Storer emigrated to Calvert County in the Province of Maryland at some point on or before 1672. There he made careful astronomical observations with instruments he built himself, and he has been described as the first astronomer in the American colonies and as Maryland's first scientist. His most notable observations were of the Great Comet of 1680 and the comet of 1682 that later became known as Halley's Comet. He sent his observations to Newton, who cited the 1680 comet data twice in the Principia of 1687. He died the same year, before he could see that acknowledgment in print.