Nehemiah Strong

Rev. Nehemiah Strong (24 February 1729 (N.S.) – 13 August 1807) was an American astronomer and meteorologist who was the first Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Yale College from 1770 and produced a series of annual ephemerides, the astronomical element in almanacs, which were printed in Hartford, Connecticut, and in New Haven.

Strong was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, eldest of three children of Nehemiah and Hannah Strong and the grandson of Samuel and Esther (Clapp) Strong, of Northampton, Massachusetts.

Nehemiah Strong graduated from Yale College in 1755. He entered on a tutorship at Yale in November 1757 and was soon licensed to preach and was settled Congregationalist minister at Turkey Hill, now part of East Granby, Connecticut, 1761–67.

His marriage to Lydia Smith proved to be an embarrassment, when after she had been granted a divorce in February 1759 on grounds of abandonment, her husband, Andrew Burr Jr of New Haven, having gone to the West Indies in January 1755, Burr reappeared and her marriage to Nehemiah Strong was necessarily annulled, and as a result of entanglements he was dismissed from his pastorate at Turkey Hill, 23 June 1767. won him such a wide reputation that anonymous almanacs were attributed to him. His first essay at compiling an almanac was anonymous, for Watson's Register for 1775, printed at Hartford; his second essay was The Connecticut Almanack for 1778, which identified his Yale title only. From 1782 he published almanacs under his own name at Hartford and as "Hosea Stafford" in New Haven (1776–1804). In addition, finding that he was publicly assumed to be the "Isaac Bickerstaff", having disclaimed authorship in a letter to the Connecticut Journal, New Haven, 27 October 1784, he apparently decided to take up the slack and issue almanacs as "Bickerstaff" himself: they appeared at Hartford for several years after 1785.

In a letter of 6 May 1803 to Elisha Babcock, Strong remarks that the calculations for the forthcoming year will be his last:

He recommended his pupil David Sanford of Newtown, Connecticut.