Jeremiah Dixon: Scientist, surveyor and stargazer

摘要

Jeremiah dixon, who would become immortalised in the name of the famous American border between Maryland and Pennsylvania, the Mason-Dixon Line, was in fact of English birth. He was born into a family of Quakers on 27 October 1733 in South Church, an area within Bishop Auckland, County Durham. The village of Cockfield where Jeremiah grew up had become established thanks to coal mining. Indeed Cockfield Fell, surrounding the village, is the location of the earliest recorded coal mine in the country. Jeremiah and his older brother George were educated in the town of Barnard Castle, where they would have studied mathematics, geometry, astronomy and the rudiments of surveying.