Background
He was born in Cockermouth in Cumbria in 1788 (not 1789 as claimed by many sources), the son of John Fallows, a weaver, and his wife Rebecca Fallas. Due in some part to the dedication of his father and the generosity of the townspeople, the scholarly Fearon was given the funds to attend Street John"s College, Cambridge, where he studied mathematics, coming third in his year when he graduated in 1813.
Career
He obtained his Master of Arts in 1816 and went on to teach mathematics at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. On 29 February 1820 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and on 8 June 1820 he was granted a fellowship of the Royal Society. One of his proposers for his fellowship to the Royal Society was John Herschel (son of William Herschel) whom he met at Street John"s College, Cambridge.
Later in that year he was appointed by the Admiralty to be the astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, which would involve overseeing the building of an observatory in what was then a British colony.
Between 1821 and 1829 he worked to site, plan and develop the observatory, which was the first astronomical observatory in the southern hemisphere. He, and all the observatory staff, caught scarlet fever in 1830 and, still Director of the observatory, he died of scarlet fever in Simon"s Town, South Africa in 1831 at the age of forty-three.
He was the astronomer to King George IV, and catalogued over 300 stars from his observatory in South Africa. When he first arrived, he only had two portable instruments and a clock, perhaps a Harrison clock.
The instruments were a Circle and a Transit Instrument.
When the observatory was built, he used a Jones Mural Circle and a Dolland Transit Circle. The Royal Society published his "Catalogue of 273 Stars" in 1824. Monthly Notices of the RAS.