ABSTRACT
Most comets are named after their discoverers; thus the spectacular visitor of 1 discovered independently by Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp, was known as Hale-Bopp. A few honour the mathematicians who first computed the orbits; the most celebrated example of this is, of course, Halley's Comet. Others are the comets of Encke Q.F. Encke, sometime Director of the Berlin Observatory) and Crommelin (A.C.D. Crommelin, late of Greenwich). Politicians do not enter into it at all. I say this because there is one comet, Thatcher's, that was once linked in the popular Press with the British Prime Minister. I can assure you that there is no connection whatsoever. And yet this comet is of interest, because it is associated with an annual meteor shower, the April 1 J "yrids.
