Astronomers

An astronomer or astrophysicist is a scientist whose area of research is astronomy or astrophysics. was famed for his work on , and being the first to study the surface of the Enlarge Johannes Hevelius was famed for his work on sunspots, and being the first to study the surface of the moon Astronomy is generally thought to have begun in ancient Babylon by zoroastrian priests (the magi). Recent studies of Babylonian records have shown them to be extremely accurate for the ancient night sky. Following the Babylonians, the egyptians also had an emphasis on observations of the sky. Mixtures of religious interpretations of the sky, as mythic tales of the gods, led to a duality that we now identify as astrology. It is important to recognize that before about 1750, there was no distinction between astronomy and astrology. Unlike most scientists, astronomers cannot directly interact with the celestial bodies, and so instead must resort to detailed observation in order to make discoveries. Generally, astronomers use telescopes or other imaging equipment to make such observations.

List of Astronomers

  • Andres Celsius - Anders Celsius (November 27, 1701 - April 25, 1744) was a Swedish astronomer. Celsius was born at Ovanεker in Sweden. He was professor of astronomy at Uppsala University from 1730 to 1744, but travelled from 1732 to 1735 visiting notable observatories in Germany, Italy and France. At Nuremberg he published in 1733 a collection of 316 observations of the aurora borealis made by himself and others over the period 1716-1732.
  • Hipparchus - Hipparchus (circa 190 BC – circa 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. The ESA's Hipparcos Space Astrometry Mission was named after him. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (now Iznik, Turkey) and probably died on the island of Rhodes. He is known to have been active at least from 147 BC to 127 BC.
  • Ptolemy - Claudius Ptolemaeus c. 85 – c. 165), known in English as Ptolemy, was a Greek geographer, astronomer, and astrologer who probably lived and worked in Alexandria in Egypt. Ptolemy was the author of two important scientific treatises.
  • Aristarchus - Aristarchus (310 BC - circa 230 BC) was a Greek astronomer and mathematician, born in Samos, Greece. He is the first recorded person to propose a heliocentric model of the solar system, placing the Sun, not the Earth, at the center of the known universe (hence he is sometimes known as the "Greek Copernicus").
  • Nicolaus Copernicus - Nicolaus Copernicus (in Latin; Polish Mikolaj Kopernik, German Nikolaus Kopernikus; February 19, 1473 – May 24, 1543) was a Prussian (by some people seen as Polish-German – see the dispute about Copernicus' nationality) astronomer, mathematician and economist who developed a heliocentric (Sun-centered) theory of the solar system in a form detailed enough to make it scientifically useful.
  • Galileo Galilei - Galileo Galilei (Pisa, February 15, 1564 – Arcetri, January 8, 1642), was a Tuscan astronomer, philosopher, and physicist who is closely associated with the scientific revolution. His achievements include improving the telescope, a variety of astronomical observations, the first law of motion, and supporting Copernicanism effectively.
  • Johannes Kepler - Johannes Kepler (December 27, 1571 – November 15, 1630), a key figure in the scientific revolution, was a German astronomer, mathematician and astrologer. He is best known for his laws of planetary motion. He is sometimes referred to as "the first theoretical astrophysicist", although Carl Sagan also refers to him as the last scientific astrologer.
  • Sir Isaac Newton - Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1727 by the Julian calendar in use in England at the time; or 4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727 by the Gregorian calendar) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemist; who wrote the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (published 5 July 1687)1, where he described universal gravitation and, via his laws of motion, laid the groundwork for classical mechanics. Newton also shares credit with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz for the development of differential calculus. However, their work was not a collaboration; they both discovered calculus separately but nearly contemporaneously.
  • Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar - Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (October 19, 1910 – August 21, 1995) was an Indian-American physicist, astrophysicist and mathematician. He was born in Lahore, British India (now Pakistan). He attended the Presidency college in Chennai (then, Madras), where he graduated with a degree in physics. He was known to the world as simply "Chandra".
  • Henrietta Swan Leavitt - Henrietta Swan Leavitt (July 4, 1868 – December 12, 1921) was an American astronomer. At Harvard College Observatory, she studied Cepheid variable stars, whose brightness varies in a regular periodic fashion.
  • Edwin Hubble - Edwin Powell Hubble (November 20, 1889 – September 28, 1953) was a noted American astronomer, generally credited for discovering1 the redshift of galaxies and that the universe is expanding. Hubble was born to an insurance executive in Marshfield, Missouri and moved to Wheaton, Illinois in 1898.
  
 
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