Although both deaf and dumb, at the age of 17 he started to observe bright variable stars, encouraged by his neighbour, the astronomer Edward Pigott (1753–1825). In 1782 Goodricke announced that Algol’s variability was regular, and suggested that its periodic dimmings were caused by a dark body orbiting it. He went on to observe other such eclipsing binaries. In 1784 he found that Beta Lyrae and Delta Cephei varied in brightness periodically, but did not realize that their variability had a different origin. In 1786, while observing Delta Cephei, he caught pneumonia and died, aged 21.