James South was born in October of 1785 to a pharmaceutical chemist stationed in Southwark, England. After a period of conventional schooling, South turned his career path upon the study of surgery becoming a member of the College of Surgeons. As a surgeon, South was very successful and built up a reputation as an extraordinary surgeon. Upon meeting Captain Huddart however, South veered his attention towards astronomy. Huddart is a famous engineer known for his construction of an equatorial mounting for a telescope made by John Dollond, an English optician. In addition to obtaining this instrument, James South also had in his possession a six inch Gregorian reflector used in the observation of eclipses, occultations and other phenomena.
In 1816, James South married Charlotte, the niece of Joseph Ellis who happened to be his sole heiress. With the financial burden lifted, South abandoned his surgical profession and began pursuing his passions in astronomy. The funds went into building an observatory at his home on Blackman Street, Borough. In this observatory he had Huddart's instrument, an additional telescope of five inch aperature, and a transit circle made by Edward Troughton. South began his observations with the re-observing of Sir William Herschel's double star in hopes of detecting changes in position with his improved measuring instruments. Two years later, South turned over the Catalog of 380 Stars which was presented to the Royal Astronomical Society in 1824. Herschel and South were awarded gold medals for their achievements in the field of astronomy.
South delved into his second series of observations, however found that his observatory's location was far from the ideal. He moved his instruments to a small town near Paris. There he discovered 458 new double stars. In 1826, James South began his investigation of the errors of the Solar Tables. These inaccurate Solar Tables were used by many astronomers; their inaccuracy attributed to the heating of instrument of observation. South designed an experiment comparing the accuracy of his equipment after zero to controlled amount (1 hour) of sun exposure. Finding that the error never exceeded 0.045 seconds, South discovered that the inaccuracies were within the Solar Tables themselves. For this achievement, South was awarded the Copely Medal.
James South moved onto researching Mars' atmosphere. It was hypothesized at the time that Mars had an atmosphere because of the distortion and partial blocking of light that affected nearby stars during appulses. After two close star approaches and one occultation, South studied the diminution of the stars' light and found it to not be as extensive as reported earlier by Cassini. His findings were published in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
In 1829, James South was elected president of the Royal Society and the royal charter was issued to him in 1831. This grant was cause for much unrest and dispute among South and his fellow astronomers. He withdrew from the society left behind by his friends and threatened to permanently leave to France to continue his astronomical studies. In July of 1830 however, James South was knighted by William IV and chose to remain in England. He built another observatory in Kensington and in addition to his former instruments, bought a twelve inch object-glass telescope for one thousand pounds. Troughton finished its equatorial mounting in 1831 but it dismantled because of the telescope's faulty mounting. James South sued Troughton, but lost and dismantled the large telescope to be sold in parts at a local auction.
South continued his work in the field of astronomy with smaller, casual observations of celestial objects. As he aged, South became visually and aurally impaired. He remained so until his death in his observatory in October of 1867.
