Terence J Deeming Editor

David S. Evans (1916–2004) was Professor of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. Before joining the university's astronomy faculty, he lived for seventeen years in the Royal Observatory, Cape of Good Hope, once the residence of Herschel's principal collaborator, Thomas Maclear. Becoming interested in the rich astronomical history of South Africa, he and his wife, Betty Hall Evans, read the Herschel correspondence in the South African Archives. When they learned that the Herschel diaries were in Texas, they undertook, with the assistance of Terence J. Deeming (1937–1992), associate professor of astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, and Stephen Goldfarb, then graduate student at Case-Western Reserve University, to prepare them for publication.