establish that coral was not a plant – as many at the time believed – because it lacked the cell walls characteristic of plants. It is in fact an animal, a marine invertebrate. Family and death On 8 May 1788, William Herschel married the widow Mary Pitt (née Baldwin) at St Laurence's Church, Upton in Slough. They had one child, John, born at Observatory House on 7 March 1792. William's personal background and rise as man of science had a profound impact on the upbringing of his son and grandchildren. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1788. In 1816, William was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order by the Prince Regent and was accorded the honorary title 'Sir' although this was not the equivalent of an official British knighthood. He helped to found the Astronomical Society of London in 1820, which in 1831 received a royal charter and became the Royal Astronomical Society. In 1813, he was elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. On 25 August 1822, Herschel died at Observatory House, Windsor Road, Slough, after a long illness. He was buried at nearby St Laurence's Church, Upton, Slough. Herschel's epitaph is Caroline was deeply distressed by his death, and soon after his burial she returned to Hanover, a decision she later regretted. She had lived in England for fifty years. Her interests were much more in line with her nephew John Herschel, also an astronomer, than with her surviving family in Hanover. She continued to work on the organization and cataloguing of nebulae, creating what would later become the basis of the New General Catalogue. She died on 9 January 1848. Memorial William Herschel lived most of his life in the town of Slough, then in Buckinghamshire (now in Berkshire). He died in the town and was buried under the tower of the Church of St Laurence, Upton-cum-Chalvey, near Slough. Herschel is especially honoured in Slough and there are several memorials to him and his discoveries. In 2011 a new bus station, the design of which was inspired by the infrared experiment of William Herschel, was built in the centre of Slough. John Keats alludes to Herschel's discovery of Uranus in his sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer": "Then felt I like some watcher of the skies/ When a new planet