William Stephen Jacob

William Stephen Jacob (1813–1862) was an English astronomer, director of the Madras Observatory from 1848 to 1859. His early claim of 1855 to have detected an exoplanet, in orbit around 70 Ophiuchi, is now thought to have been mistaken.

The sixth son of Stephen Long Jacob (1764–1851), vicar of Woolavington, Somerset, he was born at his father's vicarage on 19 November 1813; John Jacob (1812–1858) was his brother, and Sir George le Grand Jacob a cousin. He entered Addiscombe College as an East India Company cadet in 1828, passed for the engineers, and completed his military education at Royal Engineer Establishment, Chatham.

After Jacob's arrival at Bombay in 1831, he spent some years with the Great trigonometrical survey in the North-West Provinces, and established a private observatory at Pune in 1842. Bad health meant he took sick leave at the Cape of Good Hope. He became assistant to Andrew Scott Waugh, but again fell ill. In 1843 he went back to England on furlough, married in 1844, and returned in 1845 to India, but left the Company's service on attaining the rank of captain in the Bombay engineers.

Jacob concentrated on science, and was appointed in December 1848 director of the Madras Observatory. In poor health, he was sent home on sick leave in 1854–5, and again in 1858–9. A transit-circle by William Simms arrived from England in March 1858, a month before he finally left the observatory, resigning on 13 October 1859.

For the solar eclipse of July 18, 1860, Jacob joined the official expedition to Spain aboard the steamer Himalaya. His project of erecting a mountain observatory at Pune was funded by parliament in 1862. He engaged to work there for three years with a 9-inch equatorial, his own purchase from Noël Paymal Lerebours, and landed at Bombay on 8 August, but died on reaching Pune on 16 August 1862, aged 48. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1849.

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