Alexander Stewart Herschel, DCL, FRS (5 February 1836 – 18 June 1907) was a British astronomer. Although much less well known than his grandfather William Herschel or his father John Herschel, he did pioneering work in meteor spectroscopy. He also worked on identifying comets as the source of meteor showers. The Herschel graph, the smallest non-Hamiltonian polyhedral graph, is named after Herschel due to his pioneering work on Hamilton's Icosian game. Early life and education The second son and fifth child of Sir John and Lady Margaret Herschel's twelve children, Herschel was born on 5 February 1836 at Feldhausen, near Cape Town, South Africa, where they had been since 1834 for John's astronomical work. His older brother was Sir William Herschel, 2nd Baronet, and his younger brother John Herschel the Younger was born in 1837. The family left for England on 11 March 1838, returning a few weeks before Queen Victoria's coronation. After some private education, Alexander was sent to Clapham Grammar School in London in 1851, of which Charles Pritchard, who would later become Savilian Professor of Astronomy, was headmaster. In 1855, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. as twentieth wrangler in 1859, proceeding M.A. in 1877. While an undergraduate he helped James Clerk Maxwell with his illustrations of the mechanics of rotation by means of the apparatus known as "the devil on two sticks." From Cambridge Herschel passed in 1861 to the Royal School of Mines in London, and began the observation of meteors which he continued to the end of his life. He early wrote, chiefly on meteorological subjects, papers for the British Meteorological Society, and between 1863 and 1867, he contributed many articles to the Intellectual Observer. Career From 1866 to 1871, Herschel was lecturer on natural philosophy, and professor of mechanical and experimental physics in the Andersonian University of Glasgow. From 1871 to 1886, he was the first professor of physics and experimental philosophy in the University of Durham College of Science, Newcastle upon Tyne. At the Durham College, Herschel provided, chiefly by his personal exertions, apparatuses for the newly installed laboratory, some being made by his own hands. When the college migrated as Armstrong College to new buildings, the new Herschel Physical Laboratory was named after him. Herschel made accurate records of his observations of shooting stars in a long series of manuscript notebooks. He also accomplished important work in