Sharp, Abraham

Abraham Sharp served as an observational and mathematical assistant to England’s first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed (1646–1719) at the Greenwich Observatory. He also executed the rulings on its mural arc with which Flamsteed measured the positions of nearly 3000 stars to an unprecedented accuracy. After Flamsteed’s death, Sharp and his successor, Joseph Crosthwait (b. 1681), brought to completion the second and third volumes of Flamsteed’s unfinished catalogue, Historiae Coelestis Britannicae, and its accompanying Atlas Coelestis.