John Herschel

John Herschel, March 1792- May 1871, was a gentlemen of science, performing many and most of his observations alone, but at the same time influencing some of the greatest scientists to come and further influencing the concept of collaborative science. Herschel had a fairly normal childhood outside of the fact that his father was a famous and renowned astronomer already.  He was born and raised in wealth, and upon the inheritance of his father's capital ended up using it to later fund his astronomical ventures. Herschel has published numerous books on his observations and those who he has influenced includes famous influences on society such as Charles Darwin, of whom took his influence for writing the "On the Origin of Species" from Herschel's observations on natural philosophy. Herschel was rather legendary for this perspective, and hence revolutionized further thought process pertaining to the way everything functioned and its relation to everything else. Granted Herschel wasn't fully convinced of certain facts known to day brought up by Darwin, such as he denounced Darwin's Origin of Species, the concept of conservation of energy, and firmly defended the concept of Boscovichian atomism. 

As for his astronomical ventures, one of his most famous works is known as his "Cape Observations" which stems from when he was in Africa on Cape Hope observing in great detail a very specific and tiny spot in the sky, such as the Nebula of Orion, and the star Argo. He cataloged over 1200 stars and made drawings in great detail of what he observed. Through all of this he was even able to prove his father's theory of that these glowing masses aren't just randomly scattered in space but in stead seem to congregate in a form of canopy around a central vertex of some sort. He also continued on his father's work beyond Hope in the cataloging of double stars, clusters and nebulae with the assistance of James South and a few others, expanding his father's observations greatly. He was revolutionary in heavily pushing the need for rigorous mathematical crunching and the view/observation of natural phenomena such as the nature of light. He did also later realize the need for collaboration from multiple places around the world for things such as magnetic stuff and things.