John Michell is the first person to apply the new mathematics of statistics to the study of the stars, and demonstrates in a 1767 paper that many more stars occur in pairs or groups than a perfectly random distribution can account for.

He focuses his investigation on the Pleiades cluster, and calculates that the likelihood of finding such a close grouping of stars is about one in half a million.

He concludes that the stars in these double or multiple star systems might be drawn to one another by gravitational pull, thus providing the first evidence for the existence of binary stars and star clusters.

His work on double stars influence Herschel’s research on the same topic.

Michell follows his work in seismology with work in astronomy, and after publishing his findings in 1767 he serves on an astronomical committee of the Royal Society.