List of Famous Astronomers
- Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author (described in his own day as a "natural philosopher") who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time, and a key figure in the scientific revolution. His book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), first published in 1687, laid the foundations of classical mechanics. Newton also made seminal contributions to optics, and shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for developing the infinitesimal calculus. In Principia, Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation that formed the dominant scientific viewpoint until it was superseded by the theory of relativity. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion, account for tides, the trajectories of comets, the precession of the equinoxes and other phenomena, eradicating doubt about the Solar System's heliocentricity. He demonstrated that the motion of objects on Earth and celestial bodies could be accounted for by the same principles. Newton's inference that the Earth is an oblate spheroid was later confirmed by the geodetic measurements of Maupertuis, La Condamine, and others, convincing most European scientists of the superiority of Newtonian mechanics over earlier systems. Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a sophisticated theory of colour based on the observation that a prism separates white light into the colours of the visible spectrum. His work on light was collected in his highly influential book Opticks, published in 1704. He also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. In addition to his work on calculus, as a mathematician Newton contributed to the study of power series, generalised the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, developed a method for approximating the roots of a function, and classified most of the cubic plane curves. Newton was a fellow of Trinity College and the second Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge. He was a devout but unorthodox Christian who privately rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Unusually for a member of the Cambridge faculty of the day, he refused to take holy orders in the Church of England. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1700) and Master (1700–1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703–1727).
- Stephen Hawking was a world-renowned physicist and cosmologist known for his ground-breaking work in theoretical physics. Born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England, he displayed a keen interest in science from a young age. Despite being diagnosed with a rare early-onset slow-progressing form of motor neurone disease that gradually paralyzed him over the decades, Hawking pursued his education at both Oxford and Cambridge, earning distinctions in Natural Science and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, specializing in general relativity and cosmology. Hawking's contributions to the field of theoretical physics are countless. His work on singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation, catapulted him to global recognition. He also collaborated with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems, providing a set of conditions under which a singularity would occur in nature. He further developed a mathematical proof for black holes, and his research on quantum mechanics and thermal properties of light in the early 1970s led to his discovery that black holes could theoretically leak energy and particles into space, and eventually explode‚ an astonishing revelation in the field of astrophysics. Beyond the sphere of academia, Stephen Hawking became a household name through his best-selling books, most notably A Brief History of Time which sold over 25 million copies worldwide. Despite the progressive nature of his disease which resulted in his reliance on a speech-generating device for communication, Hawking continued to lecture, write, and inspire millions around the world until his death on March 14, 2018. In life and after, Hawking remains an indomitable figure in the realm of science, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and an embodiment of the quest for knowledge.
- Galileo Galilei ( GAL-il-AY-oh, also US: -EE-oh, Italian: [ɡaliˈlɛːo ɡaliˈlɛi]; 15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath from Pisa. Galileo has been called the "father of observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of the scientific method", and the "father of modern science".Galileo studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall, the principle of relativity, inertia, projectile motion and also worked in applied science and technology, describing the properties of pendulums and "hydrostatic balances", inventing the thermoscope and various military compasses, and using the telescope for scientific observations of celestial objects. His contributions to observational astronomy include the telescopic confirmation of the phases of Venus, the observation of the four largest satellites of Jupiter, the observation of Saturn's rings, and the analysis of sunspots. Galileo's championing of heliocentrism and Copernicanism was controversial during his lifetime, when most subscribed to geocentric models such as the Tychonic system. He met with opposition from astronomers, who doubted heliocentrism because of the absence of an observed stellar parallax. The matter was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615, which concluded that heliocentrism was "foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture". Galileo later defended his views in Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632), which appeared to attack Pope Urban VIII and thus alienated him and the Jesuits, who had both supported Galileo up until this point. He was tried by the Inquisition, found "vehemently suspect of heresy", and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. While under house arrest, he wrote Two New Sciences, in which he summarized work he had done some forty years earlier on the two sciences now called kinematics and strength of materials.
- Carl Sagan was a renowned American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author, born on November 9, 1934, in Brooklyn, New York. His profound curiosity about the cosmos was evident from his early years, which led him to study physics and astronomy. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Chicago and subsequently obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1960. Sagan held academic positions at prestigious institutions such as Harvard University and Cornell University, where he imparted his knowledge to eager minds. Sagan's contributions to the field of space science were nothing short of monumental. He played a pivotal role in NASA's Mariner, Viking, Voyager, and Galileo expeditions to other planets. Notably, he helped select the Mars landing sites for the Viking probes and was instrumental in the creation of the gold-anodized plaques and golden records carried by the Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, and Voyager spacecraft. These records contained sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life on Earth and were intended for any extraterrestrial life that might find them. Apart from his scientific endeavors, Sagan was an eloquent communicator of science, making complex concepts accessible to the general public. His landmark television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage aired in 1980, captivating millions with its exploration of the universe's mysteries. He also penned many books, including the critically acclaimed Pale Blue Dot and Contact, the latter of which was adapted into a successful film. Sagan passed away on December 20, 1996, but his legacy continues to inspire curiosity and wonder about the cosmos.
- Archimedes of Syracuse (; Greek: Ἀρχιμήδης; c. 287 – c. 212 BC) was a Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer. Although few details of his life are known, he is regarded as one of the leading scientists in classical antiquity. Generally considered the greatest mathematician of antiquity and one of the greatest of all time, Archimedes anticipated modern calculus and analysis by applying concepts of infinitesimals and the method of exhaustion to derive and rigorously prove a range of geometrical theorems, including the area of a circle, the surface area and volume of a sphere, and the area under a parabola.Other mathematical achievements include deriving an accurate approximation of pi, defining and investigating the spiral bearing his name, and creating a system using exponentiation for expressing very large numbers. He was also one of the first to apply mathematics to physical phenomena, founding hydrostatics and statics, including an explanation of the principle of the lever. He is credited with designing innovative machines, such as his screw pump, compound pulleys, and defensive war machines to protect his native Syracuse from invasion. Archimedes died during the Siege of Syracuse when he was killed by a Roman soldier despite orders that he should not be harmed. Cicero describes visiting the tomb of Archimedes, which was surmounted by a sphere and a cylinder, which Archimedes had requested be placed on his tomb to represent his mathematical discoveries. Unlike his inventions, the mathematical writings of Archimedes were little known in antiquity. Mathematicians from Alexandria read and quoted him, but the first comprehensive compilation was not made until c. 530 AD by Isidore of Miletus in Byzantine Constantinople, while commentaries on the works of Archimedes written by Eutocius in the sixth century AD opened them to wider readership for the first time. The relatively few copies of Archimedes' written work that survived through the Middle Ages were an influential source of ideas for scientists during the Renaissance, while the discovery in 1906 of previously unknown works by Archimedes in the Archimedes Palimpsest has provided new insights into how he obtained mathematical results.
- Nicolaus Copernicus (; Polish: Mikołaj Kopernik; German: Nikolaus Kopernikus; Niklas Koppernigk; 19 February 1473 – 24 May 1543) was a Renaissance-era mathematician and astronomer, who formulated a model of the universe that placed the Sun rather than Earth at the center of the universe, in all likelihood independently of Aristarchus of Samos, who had formulated such a model some eighteen centuries earlier.The publication of Copernicus' model in his book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), just before his death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican Revolution and making a pioneering contribution to the Scientific Revolution.Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom of Poland since 1466. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was also a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat, and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money—a key concept in economics—and in 1519 he formulated an economic principle that later came to be called Gresham's law.
- Ibn Sina (Persian: ابن سینا), also known as Abu Ali Sina (ابوعلی سینا), Pur Sina (پورسینا), and often known in the west as Avicenna (; c. 980 – June 1037) was a Persian Muslim polymath who is regarded as one of the most significant physicians, astronomers, thinkers and writers of the Islamic Golden Age, and the father of modern medicine. Avicenna is also called "the most influential philosopher of the pre-modern era". Of the 450 works he is believed to have written, around 240 have survived, including 150 on philosophy and 40 on medicine.His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia which became a standard medical text at many medieval universities and remained in use as late as 1650. In 1973, Avicenna's Canon Of Medicine was reprinted in New York.Besides philosophy and medicine, Avicenna's corpus includes writings on astronomy, alchemy, geography and geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics and works of poetry.
- A deeply intelligent man with an extremely personable, mediagenic style, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson became equal parts astrophysicist and media celebrity. He was born in 1958 to mother Sunchita Marie Feliciano (a gerontologist) and father Cyril deGrasse Tyson, a sociologist and human resource commissioner for New York City mayor John Lindsay who also served as the first Director of Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited. Tyson was a product of the public school system, through to his graduation from the Bronx High School of Science. Following this, he then earned his BA in Physics from Harvard and a PhD in Astrophysics from Columbia (this despite lobbying from none other than Carl Sagan, who attempted in vain to lure Tyson To Cornell). Tyson has written for dozens of publications and authored nearly a dozen books. However, even though his professional achievements are large -- including those related to star formations, exploding stars, dwarf galaxies and the structure of the Milky Way -- he became perhaps best known for being the man held most responsible for the stripping of Pluto of its former planetary status. It was reclassified as a "dwarf planet," a move which, according to Tyson himself, prompted hate mail from several young people who had come to identify with it. His exposure during this time led to an ever-burgeoning media career, with Tyson becoming the go-to astrophysicist for several channels and programs. Beginning in the fall of 2006, he appeared for five seasons as on-camera host and off-camera executive producer for NOVA ScienceNOW (PBS 2006-2011), and also became a familiar talking head on news and comedy programs that wanted to discuss scientific topics. In 2009, Tyson began a run as host of StarTalk, a show (later a podcast) combining celebrity guests, standup comedians (and the doctor) engaging in information yet playful science banter. Tyson was named one of the "100 most influential persons in the world" by TIME in 2007 and "Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive" by People in 2000. He received NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2011, the organization's the highest award possible for a non-governmental employee.
- 1The Martian7 Votes
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- Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend, but he appears to have been the son of Mnesarchus, a gem-engraver on the island of Samos. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he travelled to Croton, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism, although modern scholars doubt that he ever advocated for complete vegetarianism. The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the "transmigration of souls", which holds that every soul is immortal and, upon death, enters into a new body. He may have also devised the doctrine of musica universalis, which holds that the planets move according to mathematical equations and thus resonate to produce an inaudible symphony of music. Scholars debate whether Pythagoras developed the numerological and musical teachings attributed to him, or if those teachings were developed by his later followers, particularly Philolaus of Croton. Following Croton's decisive victory over Sybaris in around 510 BC, Pythagoras's followers came into conflict with supporters of democracy and Pythagorean meeting houses were burned. Pythagoras may have been killed during this persecution, or escaped to Metapontum, where he eventually died. In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher ("lover of wisdom") and that he was the first to divide the globe into five climatic zones. Classical historians debate whether Pythagoras made these discoveries, and many of the accomplishments credited to him likely originated earlier or were made by his colleagues or successors. Some accounts mention that the philosophy associated with Pythagoras was related to mathematics and that numbers were important, but it is debated to what extent, if at all, he actually contributed to mathematics or natural philosophy. Pythagoras influenced Plato, whose dialogues, especially his Timaeus, exhibit Pythagorean teachings. Pythagorean ideas on mathematical perfection also impacted ancient Greek art. His teachings underwent a major revival in the first century BC among Middle Platonists, coinciding with the rise of Neopythagoreanism. Pythagoras continued to be regarded as a great philosopher throughout the Middle Ages and his philosophy had a major impact on scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton. Pythagorean symbolism was used throughout early modern European esotericism and his teachings as portrayed in Ovid's Metamorphoses influenced the modern vegetarian movement.
- Tycho Brahe (; born Tyge Ottesen Brahe; 14 December 1546 – 24 October 1601) was a Danish nobleman, astronomer, and writer known for his accurate and comprehensive astronomical and planetary observations. He was born in the then Danish peninsula of Scania. Well known in his lifetime as an astronomer, astrologer and alchemist, he has been described as "the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts." His observations were some five times more accurate than the best available observations at the time. An heir to several of Denmark's principal noble families, he received a comprehensive education. He took an interest in astronomy and in the creation of more accurate instruments of measurement. As an astronomer, Tycho worked to combine what he saw as the geometrical benefits of the Copernican system with the philosophical benefits of the Ptolemaic system into his own model of the universe, the Tychonic system. His system correctly saw the Moon as orbiting Earth, and the planets as orbiting the Sun, but erroneously considered the Sun to be orbiting the Earth. Furthermore, he was the last of the major naked-eye astronomers, working without telescopes for his observations. In his De nova stella (On the New Star) of 1573, he refuted the Aristotelian belief in an unchanging celestial realm. His precise measurements indicated that "new stars" (stellae novae, now known as supernovae), in particular that of 1572, lacked the parallax expected in sublunar phenomena and were therefore not tailless comets in the atmosphere as previously believed but were above the atmosphere and beyond the moon. Using similar measurements he showed that comets were also not atmospheric phenomena, as previously thought, and must pass through the supposedly immutable celestial spheres. King Frederick II granted Tycho an estate on the island of Hven and the funding to build Uraniborg, an early research institute, where he built large astronomical instruments and took many careful measurements, and later Stjerneborg, underground, when he discovered that his instruments in Uraniborg were not sufficiently steady. On the island (where he behaved autocratically toward the residents) he founded manufactories, such as a paper mill, to provide material for printing his results. After disagreements with the new Danish king, Christian IV, in 1597, he went into exile, and was invited by the Bohemian king and Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II to Prague, where he became the official imperial astronomer. He built an observatory at Benátky nad Jizerou. There, from 1600 until his death in 1601, he was assisted by Johannes Kepler, who later used Tycho's astronomical data to develop his three laws of planetary motion. Tycho's body has been exhumed twice, in 1901 and 2010, to examine the circumstances of his death and to identify the material from which his artificial nose was made. The conclusion was that his death was likely caused by a burst bladder, and not by poisoning as had been suggested, and that the artificial nose was more likely made of brass than silver or gold, as some had believed in his time.
- Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (28 December 1882 – 22 November 1944) was an English astronomer, physicist, and mathematician. He was also a philosopher of science and a populariser of science. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars, or the radiation generated by accretion onto a compact object, is named in his honour. Around 1920, he anticipated the discovery and mechanism of nuclear fusion processes in stars, in his paper "The Internal Constitution of the Stars". At that time, the source of stellar energy was a complete mystery; Eddington was the first to correctly speculate that the source was fusion of hydrogen into helium. Eddington wrote a number of articles that announced and explained Einstein's theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world. World War I had severed many lines of scientific communication, and new developments in German science were not well known in England. He also conducted an expedition to observe the solar eclipse of 29 May 1919 that provided one of the earliest confirmations of general relativity, and he became known for his popular expositions and interpretations of the theory.
- Johannes Kepler (; German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ, -nɛs -]; December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He is a key figure in the 17th-century scientific revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonices Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae. These works also provided one of the foundations for Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Kepler was a mathematics teacher at a seminary school in Graz, where he became an associate of Prince Hans Ulrich von Eggenberg. Later he became an assistant to the astronomer Tycho Brahe in Prague, and eventually the imperial mathematician to Emperor Rudolf II and his two successors Matthias and Ferdinand II. He also taught mathematics in Linz, and was an adviser to General Wallenstein. Additionally, he did fundamental work in the field of optics, invented an improved version of the refracting (or Keplerian) telescope, and was mentioned in the telescopic discoveries of his contemporary Galileo Galilei. He was a corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome.Kepler lived in an era when there was no clear distinction between astronomy and astrology, but there was a strong division between astronomy (a branch of mathematics within the liberal arts) and physics (a branch of natural philosophy). Kepler also incorporated religious arguments and reasoning into his work, motivated by the religious conviction and belief that God had created the world according to an intelligible plan that is accessible through the natural light of reason. Kepler described his new astronomy as "celestial physics", as "an excursion into Aristotle's Metaphysics", and as "a supplement to Aristotle's On the Heavens", transforming the ancient tradition of physical cosmology by treating astronomy as part of a universal mathematical physics.
- Hypatia (born c. 350–370; died 415 AD) was a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, who lived in Alexandria, Egypt, then part of the Eastern Roman Empire. She was a prominent thinker of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria where she taught philosophy and astronomy. She is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded. Hypatia was renowned in her own lifetime as a great teacher and a wise counselor. She is known to have written a commentary on Diophantus's thirteen-volume Arithmetica, which may survive in part, having been interpolated into Diophantus's original text, and another commentary on Apollonius of Perga's treatise on conic sections, which has not survived. Many modern scholars also believe that Hypatia may have edited the surviving text of Ptolemy's Almagest, based on the title of her father Theon's commentary on Book III of the Almagest. Hypatia is known to have constructed astrolabes and hydrometers, but did not invent either of these, which were both in use long before she was born. Although she herself was a pagan, she was tolerant towards Christians and taught many Christian students, including Synesius, the future bishop of Ptolemais. Ancient sources record that Hypatia was widely beloved by pagans and Christians alike and that she established great influence with the political elite in Alexandria. Towards the end of her life, Hypatia advised Orestes, the Roman prefect of Alexandria, who was in the midst of a political feud with Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria. Rumors spread accusing her of preventing Orestes from reconciling with Cyril and, in March 415 AD, she was murdered by a mob of Christians led by a lector named Peter.Hypatia's murder shocked the empire and transformed her into a "martyr for philosophy", leading future Neoplatonists such as Damascius to become increasingly fervent in their opposition to Christianity. During the Middle Ages, Hypatia was co-opted as a symbol of Christian virtue and scholars believe she was part of the basis for the legend of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. During the Age of Enlightenment, she became a symbol of opposition to Catholicism. In the nineteenth century, European literature, especially Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia, romanticized her as "the last of the Hellenes". In the twentieth century, Hypatia became seen as an icon for women's rights and a precursor to the feminist movement. Since the late twentieth century, some portrayals have associated Hypatia's death with the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, despite the historical fact that the library no longer existed during Hypatia's lifetime.
- Eratosthenes of Cyrene (; Greek: Ἐρατοσθένης ὁ Κυρηναῖος, romanized: Eratosthénis o Kyrinaíos, IPA: [eratostʰénɛːs]; c. 276 BC – c. 195/194 BC) was a Greek polymath (mathematician, geographer, poet, astronomer, and music theorist). He was a man of learning, becoming the chief librarian at the Library of Alexandria. He invented the discipline of geography, including the terminology used today.He is best known for being the first person to calculate the circumference of the Earth, which he did by comparing angles of the mid-day Sun at two places a known North-South distance apart. His calculation was remarkably accurate. He was also the first to calculate the tilt of the Earth's axis, again with remarkable accuracy. Additionally, he may have accurately calculated the distance from the Earth to the Sun and invented the leap day. He created the first map of the world, incorporating parallels and meridians based on the available geographic knowledge of his era. Eratosthenes was the founder of scientific chronology; he endeavoured to revise the dates of the chief literary and political events from the conquest of Troy. Eratosthenes dated The Sack of Troy to 1183 BC. In number theory, he introduced the sieve of Eratosthenes, an efficient method of identifying prime numbers. He was a figure of influence in many fields. According to an entry in the Suda (a 10th-century reference), his critics scorned him, calling him Beta (the second letter of the Greek alphabet) because he always came in second in all his endeavors. Nonetheless, his devotees nicknamed him Pentathlos after the Olympians who were well rounded competitors, for he had proven himself to be knowledgeable in every area of learning. Eratosthenes yearned to understand the complexities of the entire world.
- Ḥasan Ibn al-Haytham (Latinized as Alhazen ; full name Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Haytham أبو علي، الحسن بن الحسن بن الهيثم; c. 965 – c. 1040) was an Arab mathematician, astronomer, and physicist of the Islamic Golden Age. Also sometimes referred to as "the father of modern optics", he made significant contributions to the principles of optics and visual perception in particular, his most influential work being his Kitāb al-Manāẓir (كتاب المناظر, "Book of Optics"), written during 1011–1021, which survived in the Latin edition. A polymath, he also wrote on philosophy, theology and medicine.Ibn al-Haytham was the first to explain that vision occurs when light reflects from an object and then passes to one's eyes. And he was the first to point out that vision occurs in the brain, rather than in the eyes. He was also an early proponent of the concept that a hypothesis must be proved by experiments based on confirmable procedures or mathematical evidence—hence understanding the scientific method five centuries before Renaissance scientists.Born in Basra, he spent most of his productive period in the Fatimid capital of Cairo and earned his living authoring various treatises and tutoring members of the nobilities. Ibn al-Haytham is sometimes given the byname al-Baṣrī after his birthplace, or al-Miṣrī ("of Egypt"). Ibn al-Haytham was nicknamed the "Second Ptolemy" by Abu'l-Hasan Bayhaqi, and "The Physicist" by John Peckham. Ibn al-Haytham paved the way for the modern science of physical optics.
- Aryabhata (Sanskrit: आर्यभट, IAST: Āryabhaṭa) or Aryabhata I (476–550 CE) was the first of the major mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His works include the Āryabhaṭīya (which mentions that in 3600 Kaliyuga, 499 CE, he was 23 years old) and the Arya-siddhanta. For his explicit mention of the relativity of motion, he also qualifies as a major early physicist.
- Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss (; German: Gauß [ˈkaɐ̯l ˈfʁiːdʁɪç ˈɡaʊs] (listen); Latin: Carolus Fridericus Gauss; (30 April 1777 – 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and physicist who made significant contributions to many fields in mathematics and sciences. Sometimes referred to as the Princeps mathematicorum (Latin for "the foremost of mathematicians") and "the greatest mathematician since antiquity", Gauss had an exceptional influence in many fields of mathematics and science, and is ranked among history's most influential mathematicians.
- Christiaan Huygens ( HY-gənz, also US: HOY-gənz, Dutch: [ˈkrɪstijaːn ˈɦœyɣə(n)s] (listen); Latin: Hugenius; 14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695), also spelled Huyghens, was a Dutch physicist, mathematician, astronomer and inventor, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time and a major figure in the scientific revolution. In physics, Huygens made groundbreaking contributions in optics and mechanics, while as an astronomer he is chiefly known for his studies of the rings of Saturn and the discovery of its moon Titan. As an inventor, he improved the design of the telescope with the invention of the Huygenian eyepiece. His most famous invention, however, was the invention of the pendulum clock in 1656, which was a breakthrough in timekeeping and became the most accurate timekeeper for almost 300 years. Because he was the first to use mathematical formulae to describe the laws of physics, Huygens has been called the first theoretical physicist and the founder of mathematical physics.In 1659, Huygens was the first to derive the now standard formula for the centripetal force in his work De vi centrifuga. The formula played a central role in classical mechanics. Huygens was also the first to formulate the correct laws of elastic collision in his work De motu corporum ex percussione, but his findings were not published until 1703, after his death. In the field of optics, he is best known for his wave theory of light, which he proposed in 1678 and described in 1690 in his Treatise on Light, which is regarded as the first mathematical theory of light. His theory was initially rejected in favor of Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory of light, until Augustin-Jean Fresnel adopted Huygens' principle in 1818 and showed that it could explain the rectilinear propagation and diffraction effects of light. Today this principle is known as the Huygens–Fresnel principle. Huygens invented the pendulum clock in 1656, which he patented the following year. In addition to this invention, his research in horology resulted in an extensive analysis of the pendulum in his 1673 book Horologium Oscillatorium, which is regarded as one of the most important 17th-century works in mechanics. While the first part of the book contains descriptions of clock designs, most of the book is an analysis of pendulum motion and a theory of curves. In 1655, Huygens began grinding lenses with his brother Constantijn in order to build telescopes to conduct astronomical research. He designed a 50-power refracting telescope with which he discovered that the ring of Saturn was "a thin, flat ring, nowhere touching, and inclined to the ecliptic." It was with this telescope that he also discovered the first of Saturn's moons, Titan. He eventually developed in 1662 what is now called the Huygenian eyepiece, a telescope with two lenses, which diminished the amount of dispersion. As a mathematician, Huygens was a pioneer on probability and wrote his first treatise on probability theory in 1657 with the work Van Rekeningh in Spelen van Gluck. Frans van Schooten, who was the private tutor of Huygens, translated the work as De ratiociniis in ludo aleae ("On Reasoning in Games of Chance"). The work is a systematic treatise on probability and deals with games of chance and in particular the problem of points. The modern concept of probability grew out of the use of expectation values by Huygens and Blaise Pascal (who encouraged him to write the work). The last years of Huygens's life, who never married, were characterized by loneliness and depression. As a rationalist, he did not believe in an immanent supreme being and did not accept the Christian faith of his upbringing. Although Huygens did not believe in such a supernatural being, he did hypothesize on the possibility of extraterrestrial life in his Cosmotheoros, which was published shortly before his death in 1695. He speculated that extraterrestrial life was possible on planets similar to Earth and wrote that the availability of water in liquid form was a necessity for life.
- Claudius Ptolemy (; Koinē Greek: Κλαύδιος Πτολεμαῖος, Klaúdios Ptolemaîos [kláwdios ptolɛmɛ́os]; Latin: Claudius Ptolemaeus; c. AD 100 – c. 170) was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer. He lived in the city of Alexandria in the Roman province of Egypt, under the rule of the Roman Empire, had a Latin name, which several historians have taken to imply he was also a Roman citizen, cited Greek philosophers, and used Babylonian observations and Babylonian lunar theory. The 14th-century astronomer Theodore Meliteniotes gave his birthplace as the prominent Greek city Ptolemais Hermiou (Greek: Πτολεμαΐς ‘Ερμείου) in the Thebaid (Greek: Θηβαΐδα [Θηβαΐς]). This attestation is quite late, however, and there is no other evidence to confirm or contradict it. He died in Alexandria around AD 168.Ptolemy wrote several scientific treatises, three of which were of importance to later Byzantine, Islamic and Western European science. The first is the astronomical treatise now known as the Almagest, although it was originally entitled the Mathematical Treatise (Μαθηματικὴ Σύνταξις, Mathēmatikē Syntaxis) and then known as the Great Treatise (Ἡ Μεγάλη Σύνταξις, Hē Megálē Syntaxis). The second is the Geography, which is a thorough discussion of the geographic knowledge of the Greco-Roman world. The third is the astrological treatise in which he attempted to adapt horoscopic astrology to the Aristotelian natural philosophy of his day. This is sometimes known as the Apotelesmatika (Ἀποτελεσματικά) but more commonly known as the Tetrabiblos from the Greek (Τετράβιβλος) meaning "Four Books" or by the Latin Quadripartitum.
- Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (Persian: Muḥammad Khwārizmī محمد بن موسى خوارزمی; c. 780 – c. 850), Arabized as al-Khwarizmi with al- and formerly Latinized as Algorithmi, was a Persian scholar who produced works in mathematics, astronomy, and geography. Around 820 AD he was appointed as the astronomer and head of the library of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad.Al-Khwarizmi's popularizing treatise on algebra (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, c. 813–833 CE) presented the first systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations. One of his principal achievements in algebra was his demonstration of how to solve quadratic equations by completing the square, for which he provided geometric justifications. Because he was the first to treat algebra as an independent discipline and introduced the methods of "reduction" and "balancing" (the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the cancellation of like terms on opposite sides of the equation), he has been described as the father or founder of algebra. The term algebra itself comes from the title of his book (specifically the word al-jabr meaning "completion" or "rejoining"). His name gave rise to the terms algorism and algorithm. His name is also the origin of (Spanish) guarismo and of (Portuguese) algarismo, both meaning digit. In the 12th century, Latin translations of his textbook on arithmetic (Algorithmo de Numero Indorum) which codified the various Indian numerals, introduced the decimal positional number system to the Western world. The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing, translated into Latin by Robert of Chester in 1145, was used until the sixteenth century as the principal mathematical text-book of European universities.In addition to his best-known works, he revised Ptolemy's Geography, listing the longitudes and latitudes of various cities and localities. He further produced a set of astronomical tables and wrote about calendaric works, as well as the astrolabe and the sundial. He also made important contributions to trigonometry, producing accurate sine and cosine tables, and the first table of tangents.
- Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was an American astronomer. He played a crucial role in establishing the fields of extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology and is regarded as one of the most important astronomers of all time.Hubble discovered that many objects previously thought to be clouds of dust and gas and classified as "nebulae" were actually galaxies beyond the Milky Way. He used the strong direct relationship between a classical Cepheid variable's luminosity and pulsation period (discovered in 1908 by Henrietta Swan Leavitt) for scaling galactic and extragalactic distances.Hubble provided evidence that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from the Earth, a property now known as "Hubble's law", despite the fact that it had been both proposed and demonstrated observationally two years earlier by Georges Lemaître. Hubble-Lemaître's Law implies that the universe is expanding. A decade before, the American astronomer Vesto Slipher had provided the first evidence that the light from many of these nebulae was strongly red-shifted, indicative of high recession velocities.Hubble's name is most widely recognized for the Hubble Space Telescope which was named in his honor, with a model prominently displayed in his hometown of Marshfield, Missouri.
- Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Tūsī (Persian: محمد بن محمد بن حسن طوسی 18 February 1201 – 26 June 1274), better known as Nasir al-Din Tusi (Persian: نصیر الدین طوسی; or simply Tusi in the West), was a Persian polymath, architect, philosopher, physician, scientist, and theologian. He is often considered the creator of trigonometry as a mathematical discipline in its own right. He was a Twelver Muslim. The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars.
- Ibn Rushd (Arabic: ابن رشد; full name in Arabic: أبو الوليد محمد ابن احمد ابن رشد, romanized: Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad Ibn ʾAḥmad Ibn Rušd; 1126 – 11 December 1198), often Latinized as Averroes (English pronunciation: ), was a Muslim Andalusian philosopher and thinker who wrote about many subjects, including philosophy, theology, medicine, astronomy, physics, Islamic jurisprudence and law, and linguistics. His philosophical works include numerous commentaries on Aristotle, for which he was known in the West as The Commentator. He also served as a judge and a court physician for the Almohad caliphate. He was born in Córdoba in 1126 to a family of prominent judges—his grandfather was the chief judge of the city. In 1169 he was introduced to the caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf, who was impressed with his knowledge, became his patron and commissioned many of Averroes' commentaries. Averroes later served multiple terms as a judge in Seville and Córdoba. In 1182, he was appointed as court physician and the chief judge of Córdoba. After Abu Yusuf's death in 1184, he remained in royal favor until he fell into disgrace in 1195. He was targeted on various charges—likely for political reasons—and was exiled to nearby Lucena. He returned to royal favor shortly before his death on 11 December 1198. Averroes was a strong proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and opposed the Neoplatonist tendencies of earlier Muslim thinkers, such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna. He also defended the pursuit of philosophy against criticism by Ashari theologians such as Al-Ghazali. Averroes argued that philosophy was permissible in Islam and even compulsory among certain elites. He also argued scriptural text should be interpreted allegorically if it appeared to contradict conclusions reached by reason and philosophy. His legacy in the Islamic world was modest for geographical and intellectual reasons. In the West, Averroes was known for his extensive commentaries on Aristotle, many of which were translated into Latin and Hebrew. The translations of his work reawakened Western European interest in Aristotle and Greek thinkers, an area of study that had been widely abandoned after the fall of the Roman Empire. His thoughts generated controversies in Latin Christendom and triggered a philosophical movement called Averroism based on his writings. His unity of the intellect thesis, proposing that all humans share the same intellect, became one of the most well-known and controversial Averroist doctrines in the West. His works were condemned by the Catholic Church in 1270 and 1277. Although weakened by the condemnations and sustained critique by Thomas Aquinas, Latin Averroism continued to attract followers up to the sixteenth century.
- Henrietta Swan Leavitt (; July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. A graduate of Radcliffe College, she worked at the Harvard College Observatory as a "computer", tasked with examining photographic plates in order to measure and catalog the brightness of stars. This work led her to discover the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variables. Leavitt's discovery provided astronomers with the first "standard candle" with which to measure the distance to faraway galaxies. After her death, Edwin Hubble used Leavitt's luminosity–period relation, together with the galactic spectral shifts first measured by Vesto Slipher at Lowell Observatory, in order to establish that the universe is expanding (see Hubble's law).
- Hipparchus of Nicaea (; Greek: Ἵππαρχος, Hipparkhos; c. 190 – c. 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He is considered the founder of trigonometry but is most famous for his incidental discovery of precession of the equinoxes.Hipparchus was born in Nicaea, Bithynia (now İznik, Turkey), and probably died on the island of Rhodes, Greece. He is known to have been a working astronomer at least from 162 to 127 BC. Hipparchus is considered the greatest ancient astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. He was the first whose quantitative and accurate models for the motion of the Sun and Moon survive. For this he certainly made use of the observations and perhaps the mathematical techniques accumulated over centuries by the Babylonians and by Meton of Athens (5th century BC), Timocharis, Aristyllus, Aristarchus of Samos and Eratosthenes, among others. He developed trigonometry and constructed trigonometric tables, and he solved several problems of spherical trigonometry. With his solar and lunar theories and his trigonometry, he may have been the first to develop a reliable method to predict solar eclipses. His other reputed achievements include the discovery and measurement of Earth's precession, the compilation of the first comprehensive star catalog of the western world, and possibly the invention of the astrolabe, also of the armillary sphere, which he used during the creation of much of the star catalogue.
- Sir Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore (4 March 1923 – 9 December 2012) was an English amateur astronomer who attained prominent status in that field as a writer, researcher, radio commentator and television presenter.Moore was President of the British Astronomical Association, co-founder and president of the Society for Popular Astronomy, author of over seventy books on astronomy, and presenter of the world's longest-running television series with the same original presenter, BBC's The Sky at Night. He became known as a specialist in Moon observation and for creating the Caldwell catalogue. Idiosyncrasies such as his rapid diction and monocle made him a popular and instantly recognisable figure on British television. Moore was also a self-taught xylophonist and pianist, as well as an accomplished composer. He was an amateur cricketer, golfer and chess player. In addition to many popular science books, he wrote numerous works of fiction. He was an opponent of fox hunting, an outspoken critic of the European Union, supporter of the UK Independence Party and served as chairman of the short-lived anti-immigration United Country Party. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II; Moore was once engaged but his fiancée was killed during the war, and he never married or had children.
- Samuel Pierpont Langley (August 22, 1834 – February 27, 1906) was an American astronomer, physicist, inventor of the bolometer and aviation pioneer.
- George Driver "Pinky" Nelson (born (1950-07-13)July 13, 1950) is an American physicist, astronomer, science educator, and a former NASA astronaut.
- Colin Michael Foale (born 6 January 1957) is a British-American astrophysicist and former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of six space missions, and is the only NASA astronaut to have flown extended missions aboard both Mir and the International Space Station. He was the first Briton to perform a space walk, and until 17 April 2008, he held the record for most time spent in space by a US citizen: 374 days, 11 hours, 19 minutes. He still holds the cumulative-time-in-space record for a UK citizen.
- David Rittenhouse (April 8, 1732 – June 26, 1796) was an American astronomer, inventor, clockmaker, mathematician, surveyor, scientific instrument craftsman, and public official. Rittenhouse was a member of the American Philosophical Society and the first director of the United States Mint.
- Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Al-Bīrūnī (Persian: ابوریحان محمد بن احمد البیرونی Abū Rayḥān Bērōnī; New Persian: Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī) (973–after 1050), known as Biruni (Persian: بیرونی) or Al-Biruni (Arabic: البيروني) in English language, was an Iranian scholar and polymath. He was from Khwarazm – a region which encompasses modern-day western Uzbekistan, and northern Turkmenistan. Biruni is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic era and was well versed in physics, mathematics, astronomy, and natural sciences, and also distinguished himself as a historian, chronologist and linguist. He studied almost all fields of science and was compensated for his research and strenuous work. Royalty and powerful members of society sought out Al-Biruni to conduct research and study to uncover certain findings. He lived during the Islamic Golden Age, in which scholarly thought went hand in hand with the thinking and methodology of the Islamic religion. In addition to this type of influence, Al-Biruni was also influenced by other nations, such as the Greeks, who he took inspiration from when he turned to studies of philosophy. He was conversant in Khwarezmian, Persian, Arabic, Sanskrit, and also knew Greek, Hebrew and Syriac. He spent much of his life in Ghazni, then capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty, in modern-day central-eastern Afghanistan. In 1017 he travelled to South Asia and authored a study of Indian culture (Tahqiq ma li-l-hind...) after exploring the Hinduism practised in India. He was given the title "founder of Indology". He was an impartial writer on customs and creeds of various nations, and was given the title al-Ustadh ("The Master") for his remarkable description of early 11th-century India.
- Dirk Dries David Damiaan, Viscount Frimout (born 21 March 1941 in Poperinge, Belgium) is an astrophysicist for the European Space Agency. He flew aboard NASA Space Shuttle mission STS-45 as a payload specialist, making him the first Belgian in space.
- James Gregory FRS (November 1638 – October 1675) was a Scottish mathematician and astronomer. His surname is sometimes spelled as Gregorie, the original Scottish spelling. He described an early practical design for the reflecting telescope – the Gregorian telescope – and made advances in trigonometry, discovering infinite series representations for several trigonometric functions. In his book Geometriae Pars Universalis (1668) Gregory gave both the first published statement and proof of the fundamental theorem of the calculus (stated from a geometric point of view, and only for a special class of the curves considered by later versions of the theorem), for which he was acknowledged by Isaac Barrow.
- Anton M.J. "Tom" Gehrels (February 21, 1925 – July 11, 2011) was a Dutch–American astronomer, Professor of Planetary Sciences, and Astronomer at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
Cornelis Johannes van Houten
Cornelis Johannes van Houten (February 18, 1920 – 24 August 2002) was a Dutch astronomer, sometimes referred to as Kees van Houten.- Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 9, 1806) was a free African-American almanac author, surveyor, naturalist, and farmer. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, to a free African-American woman and a former slave, Banneker had little formal education and was largely self-taught. He is known for being part of a group led by Major Andrew Ellicott that surveyed the original borders of the District of Columbia, the federal capital district of the United States. Banneker's knowledge of astronomy helped him author a commercially successful series of almanacs. He corresponded with Thomas Jefferson on the topics of slavery and racial equality, Jefferson having earlier drafted the United States Declaration of Independence. Abolitionists and advocates of racial equality promoted and praised Banneker's works. Although a fire on the day of Banneker's funeral destroyed many of his papers and belongings, one of his journals and several of his remaining artifacts are presently available for public viewing. Parks, schools, streets and other tributes have commemorated Banneker throughout the years since he lived. However, many accounts of his life exaggerate or falsely attribute his works.
- William Alfred Fowler (August 9, 1911 – March 14, 1995) was an American nuclear physicist, later astrophysicist, who, with Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar won the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is known for his theoretical and experimental research into nuclear reactions within stars and the energy elements produced in the process.
Eric Walter Elst
Eric Walter Elst (born 1936) is a Belgian astronomer at the Observatory at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle and a prolific discoverer of asteroids. The Minor Planet Center ranks him among the top 10 discoverers of minor planets with thousands of discoveries made at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile and at the Rozhen Observatory in Bulgaria during 1986–2009.The minor planet 3936 Elst, a stony Vestian asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, roughly 6 kilometers in diameter, was named in his honour.- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar ; 19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian American astrophysicist who spent his professional life in the United States. He was awarded the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for "...theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars". His mathematical treatment of stellar evolution yielded many of the current theoretical models of the later evolutionary stages of massive stars and black holes. The Chandrasekhar limit is named after him. Chandrasekhar worked on a wide variety of physical problems in his lifetime, contributing to the contemporary understanding of stellar structure, white dwarfs, stellar dynamics, stochastic process, radiative transfer, the quantum theory of the hydrogen anion, hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic stability, turbulence, equilibrium and the stability of ellipsoidal figures of equilibrium, general relativity, mathematical theory of black holes and theory of colliding gravitational waves. At the University of Cambridge, he developed a theoretical model explaining the structure of white dwarf stars that took into account the relativistic variation of mass with the velocities of electrons that comprise their degenerate matter. He showed that the mass of a white dwarf could not exceed 1.44 times that of the Sun – the Chandrasekhar limit. Chandrasekhar revised the models of stellar dynamics first outlined by Jan Oort and others by considering the effects of fluctuating gravitational fields within the Milky Way on stars rotating about the galactic centre. His solution to this complex dynamical problem involved a set of twenty partial differential equations, describing a new quantity he termed 'dynamical friction', which has the dual effects of decelerating the star and helping to stabilize clusters of stars. Chandrasekhar extended this analysis to the interstellar medium, showing that clouds of galactic gas and dust are distributed very unevenly. Chandrasekhar studied at Presidency College, Madras (now Chennai) and the University of Cambridge. A long-time professor at the University of Chicago, he did some of his studies at the Yerkes Observatory, and served as editor of The Astrophysical Journal from 1952 to 1971. He was on the faculty at Chicago from 1937 until his death in 1995 at the age of 84, and was the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Theoretical Astrophysics.
- John-David Francis Bartoe (born November 17, 1944 in Abington, Pennsylvania) is an American astrophysicist. He is the Research Manager for the International Space Station (ISS) at NASA's Johnson Space Center. He provides oversight for the Program Manager concerning the research capability, research hardware, and research plans of the ISS. As a civilian employee of the US Navy, he flew aboard Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist.
- Al-Farabi (; Persian: ابو نصر محمد بن محمد فارابي Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al Fārābī; known in the West as Alpharabius; c. 872 – between 14 December, 950 and 12 January, 951) was a renowned philosopher and jurist who wrote in the fields of political philosophy, metaphysics, ethics and logic. He was also a scientist, cosmologist, mathematician and music scholar.In Islamic philosophical tradition he was often called "the Second Teacher", following Aristotle who was known as "the First Teacher". He is credited with preserving the original Greek texts during the Middle Ages because of his commentaries and treatises, and influencing many prominent philosophers, like Avicenna and Maimonides. Through his works, he became well-known in the West as well as the East.
- Ingrid van Houten-Groeneveld (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈɪŋɡrɪt fɑn ˈɦʌutə(ŋ) ˈɣrunəˌvɛlt]; 21 October 1921 – 30 March 2015) was a Dutch astronomer. In a jointly credited trio with Tom Gehrels and her husband Cornelis Johannes van Houten, she was the discoverer of many thousands of asteroids (credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of 4,641 numbered minor planets). In the Palomar–Leiden survey, Gehrels took the images using the 48-inch Schmidt telescope at Palomar Observatory and shipped the photographic plates to the van Houtens at Leiden Observatory, who analyzed them for new asteroids. The trio are jointly credited with several thousand asteroid discoveries. Van Houten-Groeneveld died on 30 March 2015, at the age of 93, in Oegstgeest, Netherlands.The Themistian main-belt asteroid 1674 Groeneveld – discovered by Karl Reinmuth at Heidelberg and independently discovered by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä in 1938, was named in her honor (M.P.C. 2901).
- Eugene Merle Shoemaker (April 28, 1928 – July 18, 1997), also known as Gene Shoemaker, was an American geologist and one of the founders of the field of planetary science. He is best known for co-discovering the Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 with his wife Carolyn S. Shoemaker and David H. Levy. This comet hit Jupiter in July 1994: the impact was televised around the world. Shoemaker was also well known for his studies of terrestrial craters, such as Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. Shoemaker was also the first director of the United States Geological Survey's Astrogeology Research Program.
- Edmond (or Edmund) Halley, FRS (; 8 November [O.S. 29 October] 1656 – 25 January 1742 [O.S. 14 January 1741]) was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720.From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena, Halley recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the size of the Solar System. He also used his observations to expand contemporary star maps. He aided in observationally proving Isaac Newton's laws of motion, and funded the publication of Newton's influential Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. From his September 1682 observations, he used the laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets. It was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758, which he did not live to see. Beginning in 1698, he made sailing expeditions and made observations on the conditions of terrestrial magnetism. In 1718, he discovered the proper motion of the "fixed" stars.
- Sidónio Bernardino Cardoso da Silva Pais CavC OA CavA (pronounced [siˈdɔniu ˈpajʃ]; 1 May 1872 – 14 December 1918) was a Portuguese politician, military officer, and diplomat, who served as the fourth President of the First Portuguese Republic in 1918. One of the most divisive figures in modern Portuguese history, he was referred to by the writer Fernando Pessoa as the "President-King", a description that stuck in later years and symbolizes his regime.
- Omar Khayyam (; Persian: عمر خیّام [oˈmæɾ xæjˈjɒːm]; 18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. He was born in Nishapur, in northeastern Iran, and spent most of his life near the court of the Karakhanid and Seljuq rulers in the period which witnessed the First Crusade. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle.There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt رباعیات). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle.
- Aristarchus of Samos (; Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος ὁ Σάμιος, Aristarkhos ho Samios; c. 310 – c. 230 BC) was an ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who presented the first known heliocentric model that placed the Sun at the center of the known universe with the Earth revolving around it. He was influenced by Philolaus of Croton, but Aristarchus identified the "central fire" with the Sun, and he put the other planets in their correct order of distance around the Sun. Like Anaxagoras before him, he suspected that the stars were just other bodies like the Sun, albeit further away from Earth. His astronomical ideas were often rejected in favor of the geocentric theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy. Nicolaus Copernicus attributed the heliocentric theory to Aristarchus.
- Alexei Vladimir "Alex" Filippenko (; born July 25, 1958) is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko graduated from Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1984, where he was a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He was a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley and was subsequently appointed to a faculty position at the same institution. He was later named a Miller Research Professor for Spring 1996 and Spring 2005. His research focuses on supernovae and active galaxies at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths.
- Roger Joseph Boscovich, S.J. (Serbo-Croatian: Ruđer Josip Bošković; pronounced [rûd͡ʑer jǒsip bôʃkoʋit͡ɕ]; Italian: Ruggiero Giuseppe Boscovich; Latin: Rodericus Iosephus Boscovicus; 18 May 1711 – 13 February 1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, theologian, Jesuit priest, and a polymath from the Republic of Ragusa (modern-day Dubrovnik, Croatia). He studied and lived in Italy and France where he also published many of his works.Boscovich produced a precursor of atomic theory and made many contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon.
- Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov (; Russian: Михаи́л (Михáйло) Васи́льевич Ломоно́сов, IPA: [mʲɪxɐˈil vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ ləmɐˈnosəf] (listen); November 19 [O.S. November 8] 1711 – April 15 [O.S. April 4] 1765) was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries were the atmosphere of Venus and the law of conservation of mass in chemical reactions. His spheres of science were natural science, chemistry, physics, mineralogy, history, art, philology, optical devices and others. Lomonosov was also a poet and influenced the formation of the modern Russian literary language.
- Allan Rex Sandage (June 18, 1926 – November 13, 2010) was an American astronomer. He was Staff Member Emeritus with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, California. He determined the first reasonably accurate values for the Hubble constant and the age of the universe.
- Su Song was a renowned Han Chinese polymath who was described as a scientist, mathematician, statesman, astronomer, cartographer, horologist, medical doctor, pharmacologist, mineralogist, zoologist, botanist, mechanical and architectural engineer, poet, antiquarian, and ambassador of the Song Dynasty. Su Song was the engineer of a hydro-mechanical astronomical clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. The escapement mechanism of Su's clock tower had been invented by Buddhist monk Yi Xing and government official Liang Lingzan in 725 AD to operate a water-powered armillary sphere, although Su's armillary sphere was the first to be provided with a mechanical clock drive. Su's clock tower also featured the oldest known endless power-transmitting chain drive, called the tian ti, or "celestial ladder", as depicted in his horological treatise. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and sound the hours. Su Song's treatise about the clock tower, Xinyi Xiangfayao, has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by many historians, such as Joseph Needham.
- Dominique François Jean Arago (Catalan: Domènec Francesc Joan Aragó), known simply as François Arago (French: [fʁɑ̃swa aʁaɡo]; Catalan: Francesc Aragó, IPA: [fɾənˈsɛsk əɾəˈɣo]; 26 February 1786 – 2 October 1853), was a French mathematician, physicist, astronomer, freemason, supporter of the carbonari and politician.
- Edward L. G. "Ted" Bowell (born 1943 in London), is an American astronomer. Bowell was educated at Emanuel School London, University College, London, and the Université de Paris. He was principal investigator of the Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS). He has discovered a large number of asteroids, both as part of LONEOS and in his own right before LONEOS began. Among the latter are the Jovian asteroids 2357 Phereclos, 2759 Idomeneus, 2797 Teucer, 2920 Automedon, 3564 Talthybius, 4057 Demophon, and (4489) 1988 AK. He also co-discovered the periodic comet 140P/Bowell-Skiff and the non-periodic comet C/1980 E1. The outer main-belt asteroid 2246 Bowell was named in his honor. The official naming citation was published on 1 January 1981 (M.P.C. 5688).
- Abū al‐Qāsim, Aḥmad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir was a scholar.
- George Gamow (March 4, 1904 – August 19, 1968), born Georgiy Antonovich Gamov, was a Soviet-American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. He was an early advocate and developer of Lemaître's Big Bang theory. He discovered a theoretical explanation of alpha decay via quantum tunneling, and worked on radioactive decay of the atomic nucleus, star formation, stellar nucleosynthesis and Big Bang nucleosynthesis (which he collectively called nucleocosmogenesis), and molecular genetics. In his middle and late career, Gamow directed much of his attention to teaching and wrote popular books on science, including One Two Three... Infinity and the Mr Tompkins ... series of books (1939–1967). Some of his books are still in print more than a half-century after their original publication.
Muḥammad ibn Mūsá Ibn Shākir
Abū Jaʿfar, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir was a scholar.- Frank Curtis "Curt" Michel, Ph.D. (June 5, 1934 – February 26, 2015) was an American astrophysicist; a professor of astrophysics at Rice University in Houston, Texas; a former United States Air Force pilot; and a NASA astronaut.
- Geoffrey William Marcy (born September 29, 1954) is an American astronomer. He is one of the pioneers and leaders in the discovery and characterization of exoplanets. Marcy was Professor of Astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley and an Adjunct Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Francisco State University before stepping down in October 2015. His colleagues in the Berkeley Astronomy Department forced him to resign after allegations of sexual harassment were substantiated by a Berkeley investigation.Marcy and his research teams are recognized for discovering many extrasolar planets, including 70 out of the first 100 known exoplanets and also the first planetary system around a Sun-like star, Upsilon Andromedae. Marcy was a co-Investigator on the NASA Kepler mission that discovered over 4000 exoplanets. Early collaborators include R. Paul Butler, Debra Fischer and Steven S. Vogt. Later collaborators include Jason Wright, Andrew Howard, Katie Peek, John Johnson, Erik Petigura, Lauren Weiss, Lea Hirsch and the Kepler Science Team.
- Zhang Heng (Chinese: 張衡; AD 78–139), formerly romanized as Chang Heng, was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman from Nanyang who lived during the Han dynasty. Educated in the capital cities of Luoyang and Chang'an, he achieved success as an astronomer, mathematician, seismologist, hydraulic engineer, inventor, geographer, cartographer, ethnographer, artist, poet, philosopher, politician, and literary scholar. Zhang Heng began his career as a minor civil servant in Nanyang. Eventually, he became Chief Astronomer, Prefect of the Majors for Official Carriages, and then Palace Attendant at the imperial court. His uncompromising stance on historical and calendrical issues led to his becoming a controversial figure, preventing him from rising to the status of Grand Historian. His political rivalry with the palace eunuchs during the reign of Emperor Shun (r. 125–144) led to his decision to retire from the central court to serve as an administrator of Hejian in Hebei. Zhang returned home to Nanyang for a short time, before being recalled to serve in the capital once more in 138. He died there a year later, in 139. Zhang applied his extensive knowledge of mechanics and gears in several of his inventions. He invented the world's first water-powered armillary sphere to assist astronomical observation; improved the inflow water clock by adding another tank; and invented the world's first seismoscope, which discerned the cardinal direction of an earthquake 500 km (310 mi) away. He improved previous Chinese calculations for pi. In addition to documenting about 2,500 stars in his extensive star catalog, Zhang also posited theories about the Moon and its relationship to the Sun: specifically, he discussed the Moon's sphericity, its illumination by reflected sunlight on one side and the hidden nature of the other, and the nature of solar and lunar eclipses. His fu (rhapsody) and shi poetry were renowned in his time and studied and analyzed by later Chinese writers. Zhang received many posthumous honors for his scholarship and ingenuity; some modern scholars have compared his work in astronomy to that of the Greco-Roman Ptolemy (AD 86–161).
- Ruby Violet Payne-Scott, BSc (Phys) MSc DipEd (Syd) (28 May 1912 – 25 May 1981) was an Australian pioneer in radiophysics and radio astronomy, and was the first female radio astronomer.
- Fred Lawrence Whipple (November 5, 1906 – August 30, 2004) was an American astronomer, who worked at the Harvard College Observatory for over 70 years. Amongst his achievements were asteroid and comet discoveries, the "dirty snowball" hypothesis of comets, and the invention of the Whipple shield.
- Kip Stephen Thorne (born June 1, 1940) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, known for his contributions in gravitational physics and astrophysics. A longtime friend and colleague of Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan, he was the Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) until 2009 and is one of the world's leading experts on the astrophysical implications of Einstein's general theory of relativity. He continues to do scientific research and scientific consulting, most notably for the Christopher Nolan film Interstellar.In 2017, Thorne was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Rainer Weiss and Barry C. Barish "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".
- Arno Allan Penzias (; born April 26, 1933) is an American physicist, radio astronomer and Nobel laureate in physics who is co-discoverer of the cosmic microwave background radiation along with Robert Woodrow Wilson, which helped establish the Big Bang theory of cosmology.
Henri Debehogne
Henri Debehogne (30 December 1928 – 9 December 2007) was a Belgian astronomer and a prolific discoverer of minor planets.- Robert Woodrow Wilson (born January 10, 1936) is an American astronomer who, along with Arno Allan Penzias, discovered cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in 1964. The pair won the 1978 Nobel prize in physics for their discovery. While working on a new type of antenna at Bell Labs in Holmdel Township, New Jersey, they found a source of noise in the atmosphere that they could not explain. After removing all potential sources of noise, including pigeon droppings on the antenna, the noise was finally identified as CMB, which served as important corroboration of the Big Bang theory.
Nikolai Chernykh
Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh (Russian: Николай Степанович Черных) (6 October 1931 – 26 May 2004) was a Russian-born Soviet astronomer and discoverer of minor planets and comets at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory in Nauchnij, on the Crimean peninsula.- Jayant Vishnu Narlikar (born 19 July 1938) is an Indian astrophysicist. He developed with Sir Fred Hoyle the conformal gravity theory, known as Hoyle–Narlikar theory. It synthesizes Albert Einstein's theory of relativity and Mach's principle. It proposes that the inertial mass of a particle is a function of the masses of all other particles, multiplied by a coupling constant, which is a function of cosmic epoch.
Schelte J. Bus
Schelte John "Bobby" Bus (born 1956) is an American astronomer and discoverer of minor planets at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii and Deputy Director of NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, United States.V. A. Firsoff
Valdemar Axel Firsoff was known principally as an amateur astronomer. He was born in 1912 of Swedish descent, and died on 19 November 1981. He lived in Lochearnhead, Scotland, before moving to Somerset, England, where he settled in Glastonbury.Benjamin Apthorp Gould
Benjamin Apthorp Gould (September 27, 1824 – November 26, 1896) was a pioneering American astronomer. He is noted for creating the Astronomical Journal, discovering the Gould Belt, and for founding of the Argentine National Observatory and the Argentine National Weather Service.- Andrea Mia Ghez (born June 16, 1965) is an American astronomer and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. In 2004, Discover magazine listed Ghez as one of the top 20 scientists in the United States who have shown a high degree of understanding in their respective fields.
- Ibn Tufail (c. 1105 – 1185) (full Arabic name: أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi; Latinized form: Abubacer Aben Tofail; Anglicized form: Abubekar or Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail) was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, astronomer, vizier, and court official. As a philosopher and novelist, he is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. As a physician, he was an early supporter of dissection and autopsy, which was expressed in his novel.
William Kenneth Hartmann
William Kenneth Hartmann (born June 6, 1939) is a noted planetary scientist, artist, author, and writer. He was the first to convince the scientific mainstream that the Earth had once been hit by a planet sized body (Theia), creating both the moon and the Earth's 23.5° tilt.Born in Pennsylvania in 1939, he received his B.S. in physics from Pennsylvania State University, and an M.S. in geology and PhD in astronomy from the University of Arizona. His career spans over 40 years, from work in the early 1960s with Gerard Kuiper on Mare Orientale, and work on the Mariner 9 Mars mapping project, to current work on the Mars Global Surveyor imaging team. He is currently a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute. He has long been one of America's leading space artists (strongly influenced by Chesley Bonestell), and has written and illustrated numerous books on the history of Earth and the Solar System, often in collaboration with artist Ron Miller. Hartmann is a Fellow of the International Association of Astronomical Artists. His written work also includes textbooks, short fiction, and novels, the most recent being published in 2003. In 1997 he was the first recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Science from the American Astronomical Society, Division for Planetary Sciences. Hartmann was a member of the 1966–1968 University of Colorado UFO Project (informally known as the Condon Committee), a controversial public study of UFOs sponsored by the U.S. Air Force. He primarily investigated photographic evidence, and rejected most as unreliable or inconclusive; in his studies published in the Committee's final report, he concluded two cases - Great Falls (motion pictures of two bright light sources difficult to reconcile with known aircraft) and McMinnville (two photographs of a saucer-shaped craft) - were unexplained and particularly noteworthy as probative evidence of the reality of UFOs. Asteroid 3341 Hartmann is named after him.Seiji Ueda
Seiji Ueda (上田 清二, Ueda Seiji, born 1952) is a Japanese astronomer. He is a prolific discoverer of minor planets. Between 1987 and 2000, Ueda (in collaboration with Hiroshi Kaneda) discovered 705 asteroids.He holds an MD and Ph.D. from Stanford University and is on the staff at the Graduate University for Advanced Study in Japan. The inner main-belt asteroid 4676 Uedaseiji, discovered in 1990, is named for him.- Thomas Harriot (Oxford, c. 1560 – London, 2 July 1621), also spelled Harriott, Hariot or Heriot, was an English astronomer, mathematician, ethnographer and translator who made advances within the scientific field. Thomas Harriot was recognized for his contributions in astronomy, mathematics, and navigational techniques. Harriot worked closely with John White to create advanced maps for navigation. While Harriot worked extensively on numerous papers on the subjects of astronomy, mathematics, and navigation the amount of work that was actually published was sparse. So sparse, that the only publication that has been produced by Harriot was The Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. The premise of the book includes descriptions of English settlements and financial issues in Virginia at the time. He is sometimes credited with the introduction of the potato to the British Isles. Harriot was the first person to make a drawing of the Moon through a telescope, on 26 July 1609, over four months before Galileo. After graduating from St Mary Hall, Oxford, Harriot travelled to the Americas, accompanying the 1585 expedition to Roanoke island funded by Sir Walter Raleigh and led by Sir Ralph Lane. Harriot was a vital member of the venture, having learned and translating the Carolina Algonquian language from two Native Americans: Wanchese and Manteo. On his return to England, he worked for the 9th Earl of Northumberland. At the Earl's house, he became a prolific mathematician and astronomer to whom the theory of refraction is attributed.
Henry E. Holt
Henry E. Holt (born 1929) is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets and comets, who has worked as a planetary geologist at the United States Geological Survey and Northern Arizona University.Percival Lowell
Percival Lawrence Lowell (; March 13, 1855 – November 12, 1916) was an American businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death.- Ira Sprague Bowen (December 21, 1898 – February 6, 1973) was an American physicist and astronomer. In 1927 he discovered that nebulium was not really a chemical element but instead doubly ionized oxygen.
Freimut Börngen
Freimut Börngen (born 17 October 1930) is a German astronomer and a prolific discoverer of minor planets. A few sources give his first name wrongly as "Freimuth". The Minor Planet Center credits him as F. Borngen. He has studied galaxies with the Schmidt telescope at the Karl Schwarzschild Observatory in Tautenburg, Germany. In 1995 he retired, but continues to work as a freelancer for the observatory. As a by-product of his work, he has discovered numerous asteroids (519, as of July 2006). The research on asteroids had to be done in his spare time, as the search for small objects was not considered prestigious enough by the GDR research managers. During the GDR regime, Börngen restricted himself to politically neutral names for his asteroids, such as topics related to Thuringia or famous scientists and composers. Examples include 2424 Tautenburg, 3181 Ahnert, 3245 Jensch, or 3941 Haydn. After the German reunification, he chose systematically historical, cultural, scientific and geographical namings, and at times honored amateur astronomers. Other names include references to resistance fighters against the Nazi suppression, or document a religious interest.Freimut Börngen has achieved great reputation in the international scientific community for his human qualities and the well-substantiated choice of names. In 2006, he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz am Bande (Cross of Merit on ribbon) by German Federal President Horst Köhler. The main-belt asteroid 3859 Börngen, discovered by astronomer Edward Bowell at the U.S. Anderson Mesa Station in 1987, was named in his honor. The naming and its citation was proposed and written by his college Lutz Schmadel, and published on 20 February 1989 (M.P.C. 14207).- Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet (; 7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) was an English polymath, mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint, and did botanical work.Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus. He made many contributions to the science of photography, and investigated colour blindness and the chemical power of ultraviolet rays; his Preliminary Discourse (1831), which advocated an inductive approach to scientific experiment and theory building, was an important contribution to the philosophy of science.
Al-Khazini
Abū al-Fath Abd al-Rahman Mansūr al-Khāzini or simply al-Khāzini (أبوالفتح عبدالرحمن منصور الخازنی (Persian), flourished 1115–1130) was an astronomer of Greek origin from Seljuk Persia. His astronomical tables written under the patronage of Sultan Sanjar (Zīj al-Sanjarī, 1115) is considered to be one of the major works in mathematical astronomy of the medieval period. He provided the positions of fixed stars, and for oblique ascensions and time-equations for the latitude of Marv in which he was based. He also wrote extensively on various calendrical systems and on the various manipulations of the calendars. He was the author of an encyclopedia on scales and water-balances.- Eleanor Francis "Glo" Helin (née Francis, 19 November 1932 – 25 January 2009) was an American astronomer. She was principal investigator of the Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (Some sources give her name as Eleanor Kay Helin.) She retired in 2002, and then died in 2009, at 76 years old. Helin is a prolific discoverer of minor planets (see list) and several comets, including periodic comets 111P/Helin–Roman–Crockett, 117P/Helin–Roman–Alu and 132P/Helin–Roman–Alu. She is credited as the discoverer of the object now known as both asteroid 4015 Wilson–Harrington and comet 107P/Wilson–Harrington. Although Wilson and Harrington preceded her by some decades, their observations did not establish an orbit for the object, while her rediscovery did. Helin discovered or co-discovered 903 asteroids and several comets.
- Seth Shostak (born July 20, 1943) is an American astronomer, currently Senior Astronomer for the SETI Institute and former Director of Center for SETI Research when it was a separate department.
Solon Irving Bailey
Solon Irving Bailey (December 29, 1854 in Lisbon, New Hampshire – June 5, 1931 in Norwell, Massachusetts) was an American astronomer and discoverer of the main-belt asteroid 504 Cora, on June 30, 1902.Bailey joined the staff of Harvard College Observatory in 1887. He received an M.A. from there in 1888 in addition to his previous M.A. from Boston University. After the observatory received the "Boyden Fund" bequest from the will of Uriah A. Boyden, Bailey played a major role in finding a site for Boyden Station in Arequipa, Peru, and was in charge of it from 1892 to 1919. He was also one of the first to carry out meteorological studies in Peru, traveling extensively in desolate areas at very high altitude. Boyden Station was moved to South Africa in 1927 due to better weather conditions and became known as the Boyden Observatory.He made extensive studies of variable stars in globular clusters in the southern skies. He also performed a light-curve analysis measured the rotation period of the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros during its 1903 opposition with great accuracy. Bailey was acting director of Harvard College Observatory from 1919 to 1921 after the death of Edward Charles Pickering and prior to the appointment of Harlow Shapley. He worked as a senior colleague with Henrietta Leavitt. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1892. Irving died at his summer home in Hanover, from an illness caused by heart disease, in 1931.- Carolyn Jean Spellmann Shoemaker (born June 24, 1929) is an American astronomer and is a co-discoverer of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9. She once held the record for most comets discovered by an individual.Although Shoemaker earned degrees in history, political science and English literature, she had almost no interest in science until after she met and married Eugene M. ("Gene") Shoemaker in 1950–51. She said later that his explanations of his work thrilled her. Despite her relative inexperience and her lack of a relevant scientific degree, Caltech had no objection to her joining Gene's team at the California Institute of Technology as a research assistant. Shoemaker had already showed herself to be unusually patient, and she had already demonstrated exceptional stereoscopic vision, both qualities were extremely valuable in a career looking for objects in near-earth space.
Takao Kobayashi
Takao Kobayashi (小林 隆男, Kobayashi Takao, born 1961) is a Japanese amateur astronomer and an outstanding discoverer of minor planets who currently works at the Ōizumi Observatory. The asteroid 3500 Kobayashi is named after him.- Shen Kuo (Chinese: 沈括; 1031–1095) or Shen Gua, courtesy name Cunzhong (存中) and pseudonym Mengqi (now usually given as Mengxi) Weng (夢溪翁), was a Chinese polymathic scientist and statesman of the Song dynasty (960–1279). Excelling in many fields of study and statecraft, he was a mathematician, astronomer, meteorologist, geologist, entomologist, zoologist, botanist, pharmacologist, medical scientist, agronomist, archaeologist, ethnographer, cartographer, geographer, geophysicist, mineralogist, encyclopedist, military general, diplomat, hydraulic engineer, inventor, economist, academy chancellor, finance minister, governmental state inspector, philosopher, art crtic, poet, and musician. He was the head official for the Bureau of Astronomy in the Song court, as well as an Assistant Minister of Imperial Hospitality. At court his political allegiance was to the Reformist faction known as the New Policies Group, headed by Chancellor Wang Anshi (1021–1085). In his Dream Pool Essays or Dream Torrent Essays (夢溪筆談; Mengxi Bitan) of 1088, Shen was the first to describe the magnetic needle compass, which would be used for navigation (first described in Europe by Alexander Neckam in 1187). Shen discovered the concept of true north in terms of magnetic declination towards the north pole, with experimentation of suspended magnetic needles and "the improved meridian determined by Shen's [astronomical] measurement of the distance between the pole star and true north". This was the decisive step in human history to make compasses more useful for navigation, and may have been a concept unknown in Europe for another four hundred years (evidence of German sundials made circa 1450 show markings similar to Chinese geomancer compasses in regard to declination).Alongside his colleague Wei Pu, Shen planned to map the orbital paths of the Moon and the planets in an intensive five-year project involving daily observations, yet this was thwarted by political opponents at court. To aid his work in astronomy, Shen Kuo made improved designs of the armillary sphere, gnomon, sighting tube, and invented a new type of inflow water clock. Shen Kuo devised a geological hypothesis for land formation (geomorphology), based upon findings of inland marine fossils, knowledge of soil erosion, and the deposition of silt. He also proposed a hypothesis of gradual climate change, after observing ancient petrified bamboos that were preserved underground in a dry northern habitat that would not support bamboo growth in his time. He was the first literary figure in China to mention the use of the drydock to repair boats suspended out of water, and also wrote of the effectiveness of the relatively new invention of the canal pound lock. Although Ibn al-Haytham (965–1039) was the first to describe camera obscura, Shen was the first in China to do so, several decades later. Shen wrote extensively about movable type printing invented by Bi Sheng (990–1051), and because of his written works the legacy of Bi Sheng and the modern understanding of the earliest movable type has been handed down to later generations. Following an old tradition in China, Shen created a raised-relief map while inspecting borderlands. His description of an ancient crossbow mechanism which he himself unearthed proved to be a Jacob's staff, a surveying tool which wasn't known in Europe until described by Levi ben Gerson in 1321. Shen Kuo wrote several other books besides the Dream Pool Essays, yet much of the writing in his other books has not survived. Some of Shen's poetry was preserved in posthumous written works. Although much of his focus was on technical and scientific issues, he had an interest in divination and the supernatural, the latter including his vivid description of unidentified flying objects from eyewitness testimony. He also wrote commentary on ancient Daoist and Confucian texts.
- Simon Newcomb (March 12, 1835 – July 11, 1909) was a Canadian–American astronomer, applied mathematician and autodidactic polymath, who was Professor of Mathematics in the U.S. Navy and at Johns Hopkins.Though he had little conventional schooling, he made important contributions to timekeeping as well as other fields in applied mathematics such as economics and statistics in addition to writing a science fiction novel.
- Jean Baptiste Joseph, chevalier Delambre (19 September 1749 – 19 August 1822) was a French mathematician and astronomer. He was also director of the Paris Observatory, and author of well-known books on the history of astronomy from ancient times to the 18th century.
Kazuro Watanabe
Kazurō Watanabe (渡辺 和郎, Watanabe Kazurō, born May 1, 1955) is a Japanese amateur astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets. He was born in Hokkaidō, Japan and is a member of the Astronomical Society of Japan as well as of the Oriental Astronomical Association. Through publications and the direction of junior associates, this asteroid hunter has been responsible for the discovery of nearly 700 asteroids. He is the author or the co-author of the Japanese publications Asteroid Hunter (小惑星ハンター), Celestial Body Photography Manual (天体写真マニュアル), The Celestial Sky of Our Dreams (僕らの夢の星空), as well as others. He also is a frequent contributor to the Japanese periodical Monthly Astronomical Guide (月刊天文ガイド). The minor planet 4155 Watanabe has been named in his honor.Robert Kirshner
Robert P. Kirshner (born August 15, 1949) is an American astronomer, currently the Clowes Professor of Science at Harvard University. Kirshner has worked in several areas of astronomy including the physics of supernovae, supernova remnants, the Large-scale structure of the cosmos and the use of Supernovae to measure the expansion of the universe. In 1981, along with Augustus Oemler, Jr., Paul Schechter, and Stephen Shectman, Kirshner discovered the Boötes void in a survey of galaxy redshifts. He led work on SN 1987A, the brightest supernova since Kepler's in 1604, using the International Ultraviolet Explorer satellite in 1987 and the Hubble Space Telescope after its launch in 1990. In the 1990s, together with Oemler, Schechter, Shectman and others he participated in the Las Campanas Redshift Survey, a 35,000 galaxy survey using fiber optics and plug plates. Kirshner was a member of the High-z Supernova Search Team that used observations of distant supernovae to discover the accelerating universe. This universal acceleration implies the existence of dark energy and was named the breakthrough of 1998 by Science magazine. For this work, he also shared in the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize. Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess, both of whom were Kirshner's Ph.D students, shared in the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics for the same discovery. His account of this discovery is described in The Extravagant Universe : Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos (2002; ISBN 978-0-691-05862-7). He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1998, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1992 and the American Philosophical Society since 2005. He was the President of the American Astronomical Society from 2004–2006. In July, 2015 he was appointed chief program officer for science at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, where he is leading the team responsible for distributing more than $100 million per year for research and technology that enables fundamental scientific discoveries.He received his A.B. magna cum laude in Astronomy from Harvard College in 1970, where he also won a Bowdoin Prize for Useful and Polite Literature. He earned his Ph.D., also in Astronomy, from Caltech in 1975. In 2004, he received the Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award. In 2010, he received an honorary Doctor of Science from the University of Chicago. In 2011, he won the Dannie Heineman Prize in Astrophysics from the American Institute of Physics. In 2012, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2014, he won the James Craig Watson Medal for service to astronomy from the National Academy of Sciences and shared in the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics with the High-Z Team. In 2015, he shared the Wolf Prize in Physics with B.J. Bjorken. He is a popular writer and speaker.At Harvard, he was Professor of Astronomy (1985–2016), served as the chair of the Astronomy Department (1990–1997) and as Harvard College Professor (2004–2009). He was appointed as the Clowes Professor of Science in 2001. From 1998–2004, he was the Director of the Optical and Infrared Division at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He helped Harvard join the Magellan Observatory in Chile and the Giant Magellan Telescope project. Prior to joining Harvard in 1985, he worked at Kitt Peak National Observatory and taught at the University of Michigan for 9 years, where he rose to become Professor and Chairman of the Astronomy Department and helped to build the 2.4 meter Hiltner Telescope. At Michigan, he received an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and won the Henry Russel Award. In 1999, Kirshner married the novelist and filmmaker Jayne Loader. From 2001–2007, they were the Masters of Quincy House, one of Harvard's 12 undergraduate houses.He is the father of the television writer/producer, Rebecca Rand Kirshner, and Matthew Kirshner of The Management Group in Los Angeles.- Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematical physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and an emeritus fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. Penrose has made contributions to the mathematical physics of general relativity and cosmology. He has received several prizes and awards, including the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for the Penrose–Hawking singularity theorems.
Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth
Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth (April 4, 1892 in Heidelberg – May 6, 1979 in Heidelberg) was a German astronomer and a prolific discoverer of 395 minor planets.- William Duncan MacMillan (July 24, 1871 – November 1948) was an American mathematician and astronomer. He was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin to D. D. MacMillan, who was in the lumber business, and Mary Jane MacCrea. He had a sister and two brothers; the last would later becoming managers of Cargill Elevator company of Minneapolis.William graduated from La Crosse High School in 1888. In 1889 he attended Lake Forest College, then entered the University of Virginia. Later in 1898 he earned an A.B. degree from Fort Worth University. He performed his graduate work at the University of Chicago, earning a M.A. in 1906 and a Ph.D. in 1908. In 1907, prior to completing his Ph.D., he joined the staff of the University of Chicago as a research assistant in geology. In 1908 he became an associate in mathematics, then in 1909 he began instruction in astronomy at the same institution. His career as a professor began in 1912 when he became an assistant professor. In 1917 the U.S. declared war on Germany, and Dr. MacMillan served as a major in the U.S. army's ordnance department during World War I. Following the war he became associate professor in 1919, then full professor in 1924. He made noted contributions in mathematics and astronomy. He was an early proponent of a theory in the context of solving Olbers's paradox (1922) that would later be called the "tired-light hypothesis" of cosmology. In an Associated Press report Dr. MacMillan speculated on the nature of interstellar civilizations, believing that they would be vastly more advanced than our own. "Out in the heavens, perhaps, are civilizations as far above ours as we are above the single cell, since they are so much older than ours."The crater MacMillan on the Moon is named in his honor.
- George Fitzgerald Smoot III (born February 20, 1945) is an American astrophysicist, cosmologist, Nobel laureate, and one of two contestants to win the US$1 million prize on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2006 for his work on the Cosmic Background Explorer with John C. Mather that led to the "discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation". This work helped further the Big Bang theory of the universe using the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite. According to the Nobel Prize committee, "the COBE project can also be regarded as the starting point for cosmology as a precision science." Smoot donated his share of the Nobel Prize money, less travel costs, to a charitable foundation.Currently Smoot is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, since 2010, a professor of physics at the Paris Diderot University, France and since 2016 the Helmut and Anna Pao Sohmen Professor at Large at the IAS Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. In 2003, he was awarded the Einstein Medal and the Oersted Medal in 2009.
- Not to be confused with Maia Mitchell, Australian actress and singer.Maria Mitchell (; August 1, 1818 – June 28, 1889) was an American astronomer, who in 1847 by using a telescope, discovered a comet, which as a result became known as "Miss Mitchell's Comet." She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Christian VIII of Denmark. On the medal was inscribed "Non Frustra Signorum Obitus Speculamur et Ortus" in Latin (taken from Georgics by Virgil (Book I, line 257) (English: "Not in vain do we watch the setting and rising [of the stars]"). Mitchell was the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer.The third of ten children, she was raised in the Quaker religion, but later adopted Christian Unitarianism.
- Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth. He also wrote science fiction novels, short stories and radio plays, and co-authored twelve books with his son, Geoffrey Hoyle. He spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and served as its director for six years.
- Amy Mainzer (born January 2, 1974) is an American astronomer, specializing in astrophysical instrumentation and infrared astronomy. She is the Deputy Project Scientist for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Principal Investigator for the NEOWISE project to study minor planets and the proposed Near Earth Object Camera space telescope mission.
- Tod R. Lauer (born 1957) is an American astronomer on the research staff of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. He was a member of the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera team, and is a founding member of the Nuker Team. His research interests includes observational searches for massive black holes in the centers of galaxies, the structure of elliptical galaxies, stellar populations, large-scale structure of the universe, and astronomical image processing. He was the Principal Investigator of the Destiny JDEM concept study, one of the precursors to the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope mission. Asteroid 3135 Lauer is named for him. He appears in an episode of the documentary series Naked Science. He joined the New Horizons Pluto team in order to apply his extensive experience with deep space imaging to the New Horizons data, yielding significantly clearer and mathematically accurate images of Pluto and Charon.
Anders Celsius
Anders Celsius (27 November 1701 – 25 April 1744) was a Swedish astronomer, physicist and mathematician. He was professor of astronomy at Uppsala University from 1730 to 1744, but traveled from 1732 to 1735 visiting notable observatories in Germany, Italy and France. He founded the Uppsala Astronomical Observatory in 1741, and in 1742 proposed the Celsius temperature scale which bears his name.John Dobson
John Lowry Dobson (September 14, 1915 – January 15, 2014) was an amateur astronomer and is best known for the Dobsonian telescope, a portable, low-cost Newtonian reflector telescope. He was less known for his efforts to promote awareness of astronomy (and his unorthodox views of physical cosmology) through public lectures including his performances of "sidewalk astronomy." Dobson was also the co-founder of the amateur astronomical group, the San Francisco Sidewalk Astronomers.- James Alfred Van Allen (September 7, 1914 – August 9, 2006) was an American space scientist at the University of Iowa. He was instrumental in establishing the field of magnetospheric research in space. The Van Allen radiation belts were named after him, following their discovery by his Geiger–Müller tube instruments on the 1958 satellites: (Explorer 1, Explorer 3, and Pioneer 3) during the International Geophysical Year. Van Allen led the scientific community for the inclusion of scientific research instruments on space satellites.
Edwin Brant Frost
Edwin Brant Frost II (July 14, 1866 – May 14, 1935) was an American astronomer.- Walter Sydney Adams (December 20, 1876 – May 11, 1956) was an American astronomer.
Charles Messier
Charles Messier (French: [me.sje]; 26 June 1730 – 12 April 1817) was a French astronomer most notable for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of 110 nebulae and star clusters, which came to be known as the Messier objects. The purpose of the catalogue was to help astronomical observers, in particular comet hunters like himself, distinguish between permanent and transient visually diffuse objects in the sky.- Alastair Preston Reynolds (born 13 March 1966) is a British science fiction author. He specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. He spent his early years in Cornwall, moved back to Wales before going to Newcastle University, where he read physics and astronomy. Afterwards, he earned a PhD in astrophysics from the University of St Andrews. In 1991, he moved to Noordwijk in the Netherlands where he met his wife Josette (who is from France). There, he worked for the European Space Research and Technology Centre (part of the European Space Agency) until 2004 when he left to pursue writing full-time. He returned to Wales in 2008 and lives near Cardiff.
- Ronald Newbold Bracewell AO (22 July 1921 – 12 August 2007) was the Lewis M. Terman Professor of Electrical Engineering of the Space, Telecommunications, and Radioscience Laboratory at Stanford University.
- Frederick William Herschel, (; German: Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel; 15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer, composer and brother of fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel, with whom he worked. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, Herschel followed his father into the Military Band of Hanover, before migrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen. Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774, after which he spent nine years carrying out sky surveys to investigate double stars. Herschel published catalogues of nebulae in 1802 (2,500 objects) and in 1820 (5,000 objects). The resolving power of the Herschel telescopes revealed that many objects called nebulae in the Messier catalogue were actually clusters of stars. On 13 March 1781 while making observations he made note of a new object in the constellation of Gemini. This would, after several weeks of verification and consultation with other astronomers, be confirmed to be a new planet, eventually given the name of Uranus. This was the first planet to be discovered since antiquity and Herschel became famous overnight. As a result of this discovery, George III appointed him Court Astronomer. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and grants were provided for the construction of new telescopes. Herschel pioneered the use of astronomical spectrophotometry, using prisms and temperature measuring equipment to measure the wavelength distribution of stellar spectra. In addition, Herschel discovered infrared radiation. Other work included an improved determination of the rotation period of Mars, the discovery that the Martian polar caps vary seasonally, the discovery of Titania and Oberon (moons of Uranus) and Enceladus and Mimas (moons of Saturn). Herschel was made a Knight of the Royal Guelphic Order in 1816. He was the first President of the Royal Astronomical Society when it was founded in 1820. He died in August 1822, and his work was continued by his only son, John Herschel.
- John Mace Grunsfeld (born October 10, 1958) is an American physicist and a former NASA astronaut. He is a veteran of five Space Shuttle flights and has served as NASA Chief Scientist. His academic background includes research in high energy astrophysics, cosmic ray physics and the emerging field of exoplanet studies with specific interest in future astronomical instrumentation. After retiring from NASA in 2009, he served as the Deputy Director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. In January 2012, he returned to NASA and served as associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD). Grunsfeld announced his retirement from NASA in April 2016.
Andrew Fraknoi
Andrew Fraknoi (born 1948) is a retired professor of astronomy recognized for his lifetime of work using everyday language to make astronomy more accessible and popular for both students and the general public. In 2017 Fraknoi retired from his position as Chair of the Department of Astronomy at Foothill College. In retirement he continues to teach through the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University, to give public lectures, and to continue to add to his body of written work. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honors in his field.Fraknoi continues to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute, a scientific and educational organization. He is also an elected fellow of the California Academy of Sciences, vice chair of the Lick Observatory Council, University of California's astronomical observatory, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He has a special interest in debunking astrology and other pseudosciences connected to astronomy.Charles Augustus Young
Charles Augustus Young (15 December 1834 – 4 January 1908) one of the foremost solar spectroscopist astronomers in the United States. He observed solar eclipses and worked on spectroscopy of the Sun. He observed a solar flare with a spectroscope on 3 August 1872, and also noted that it coincided with a magnetic storm on Earth. Young graduated from Dartmouth College in 1853. For two years, he taught classes at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The following year, he studied theological seminary in Andover, while also continuing to teach. In 1857, he became the Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Western Reserve College, now known as Case Western Reserve University, devoting nine years. Young's name is inscribed on the Loomis Observatory, which is the oldest observatory in the United States still remaining in its original location.In 1862, he served in the 85th Regiment of Ohio during the Civil War.in 1865, he became a professor at his alma mater, Dartmouth, remaining until 1877 when he went to teach at Princeton University. He was a successful educator who wrote a popular and widely used series of astronomy textbooks, including Manual of Astronomy. In 1927, when Henry Norris Russell, Raymond Smith Dugan and John Quincy Stewart wrote their own two-volume textbook, they entitled it Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy. Young died of pneumonia after a brief illness, at his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, on 4 January 1908.- Josef Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910 – April 27, 1986) was an American astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three consecutive projects: Project Sign (1947–1949), Project Grudge (1949–1952), and Project Blue Book (1952–1969). In later years he conducted his own independent UFO research, developing the "Close Encounter" classification system. He was among the first people to conduct scientific analysis of reports and especially of trace evidence purportedly left by UFOs.
Kin Endate
Kin Endate (円館 金, Endate Kin, born December 15, 1960) is a Japanese amateur astronomer who has discovered hundreds of asteroids, most of them in collaboration with Kazuro Watanabe, placing him among the most prolific discoverers of minor planets.- Maximilian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf (21 June 1863 – 3 October 1932) was a German astronomer and a pioneer in the field of astrophotography. He was chairman of astronomy at the University of Heidelberg and director of the Heidelberg-Königstuhl State Observatory from 1902 until his death.
- Bruno Benedetto Rossi (; Italian: [ˈrossi]; 13 April 1905 – 21 November 1993) was an Italian experimental physicist. He made major contributions to particle physics and the study of cosmic rays. A 1927 graduate of the University of Bologna, he became interested in cosmic rays. To study them, he invented an improved electronic coincidence circuit, and travelled to Eritrea to conduct experiments that showed that cosmic ray intensity from the West was significantly larger than that from the East. Forced to emigrate in October 1938 due to the Italian Racial Laws, Rossi moved to Denmark, where he worked with Niels Bohr. He then moved to Britain, where he worked with Patrick Blackett at the University of Manchester. Finally he went to the United States, where he worked with Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, and later at Cornell University. Rossi stayed in the United States, and became an American Citizen. During World War II, Rossi worked on radar at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, and he played a pivotal role in the Manhattan Project, heading the group at the Los Alamos Laboratory that carried out the RaLa Experiments. After the war, he was recruited by Jerrold Zacharias at MIT, where Rossi continued his pre-war research into cosmic rays. In the 1960s, he pioneered X-ray astronomy and space plasma physics. His instrumentation on Explorer 10 detected the magnetopause, and he initiated the rocket experiments that discovered Scorpius X-1, the first extra-solar source of X-rays.
- For the Constable of Wallingford Castle, see Richard of Wallingford.Richard of Wallingford (1292–1336) was an English mathematician, astronomer, horologist, and cleric who made major contributions to astronomy and horology while serving as abbot of St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire.
- Clarence Augustus Chant (May 31, 1865 – November 18, 1956) was a Canadian astronomer and physicist.
- Alan Harvey Guth (; born February 27, 1947) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist. Guth has researched elementary particle theory (and how particle theory is applicable to the early universe). He is Victor Weisskopf Professor of Physics in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Along with Alexei Starobinsky and Andrei Linde, he won the 2014 Kavli Prize “for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation.”He graduated from MIT in 1968 in physics and stayed to receive a master's and a doctorate, also in physics. As a junior particle physicist, Guth developed the idea of cosmic inflation in 1979 at Cornell and gave his first seminar on the subject in January 1980. Moving on to Stanford University Guth formally proposed the idea of cosmic inflation in 1981, the idea that the nascent universe passed through a phase of exponential expansion that was driven by a positive vacuum energy density (negative vacuum pressure). The results of the WMAP mission in 2006 made the case for cosmic inflation very compelling.
- Duarte Leite Pereira da Silva, GCC (11 August 1864 in Porto – 29 September 1950 in Porto; Portuguese pronunciation: [duˈaɾt(ɨ) ˈlɐjt(ɨ)]), was a Portuguese historian, mathematician, journalist, diplomat and politician. He graduated in Mathematics at the University of Coimbra, in 1885. He taught at the Politecnic Academy of Porto, from 1886 to 1911. Meanwhile, he was also the director of the newspaper diary "A Pátria". As a historian, he published many studies, later compiled in "História dos Descobrimentos" (History of the Discoveries), in 2 volumes.