Sir Thomas Maclear was an Irish-born South African astronomer who became Her Majesty's astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope.
A memorial to Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and Thomas Maclear, at Aurora, Western Cape, South Africa. The English portion of the inscription reads: "This is the site of the Maclear Beacon positioned in 1838 near the original North Terminal of the Arc of Meridian positioned by Abbé de la Caille, the first surveyor to introduce Geodetic Surveying into South Africa."
Maclear's Beacon, Table Mountain, Cape Town, 2023
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, and experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.
Portrait of a young Herschel by Alfred Edward Chalon
Disa cornuta (L.) Sw. by Margaret & John Herschel
An illustration to Jules Verne's novel Hector Servadac from 1877 shows Herschel observing the Halley's Comet in 1835 in Cape Town. Engraving by Charles Laplante after Paul Philippoteaux