astronomers library

Astronomers have contributed greatly to our understanding of physics and motion. In this section you can learn all about famous astronomers and what each of them has contributed to our understanding of space.

Featured Article: David H. Levy

Levy, David H. (1948) is an amateur astronomer who helped discover the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet. See more »

Articles 41-60 of 73

Kepler, Johannes

Kepler, Johannes (1571-1630), a German astronomer. Kepler's three laws of the motions of planets are basic to the understanding of the solar system.

Kuiper, Gerard Peter

Kuiper, Gerard Peter (1905-1973), a Dutch-American astronomer. An authority on the earth's moon, he directed the research on selection of sites for the manned moon landings of 1969-72.

Langley, Samuel Pierpont

Langley, Samuel Pierpont (1834-1906), a United States astronomer, physicist, and aviation pioneer.

Laplace, Pierre Simon de

Laplace, Pierre Simon de, Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827), a French astronomer and mathematician.

Leavitt, Henrietta Swan

Leavitt, Henrietta Swan (1868-1921) was an American astronomer whose work revolutionized human understanding of the relative brightness and variability of stars.

Leverrier, Urbain Jean Joseph

Leverrier, Urbain Jean Joseph (1811-1877), a French astronomer. Leverrier and John Couch Adams independently deduced the existence of the planet Neptune by mathematical calculations.

Lockyer, Sir Joseph Norman

Lockyer, Sir Joseph Norman (1836-1920), an English astronomer. He was one of the first to study the sun and stars with a spectroscope.

Lovell, Sir Bernard

Lovell, Sir (Alfred Charles) Bernard (1913-), an English astronomer. In 1946 Lovell demonstrated the validity of using the techniques of radio astronomy to study meteors.

Lowell, Percival

Lowell, Percival (1855-1916), a United States astronomer. In 1894 he established the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona.

Maarten Schmidt

Schmidt, Maarten (1929-) is a Dutch astronomer. He identified the starlike objects now known as quasars.

Mason, Charles

Mason, Charles (1730-1787), an English astronomer and surveyor. In addition to surveying the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania, Jeremiah Dixon and he fixed the precise measure of a degree of latitude in America.

Mitchell, Maria

Mitchell, Maria (18181889), a United States astronomer. Her birthplace was Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Nasir al-Din Al-Tusi

Al-Tusi, Nasir al-Din (1201-1274) was one of the greatest scholars of his time and one of the most influential figures in Islamic intellectual history.

Newcomb, Simon

Newcomb, Simon (1835-1909), a United States astronomer. He calculated the movements of the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Uranus, and Neptune more precisely than had been achieved previously.

Nostradamus

Nostradamus, the Latin name of Michel de Notredame (1503-1566), a French astrologer and physician.

Pease, Francis Gladheim

Pease, Francis Gladheim (18811938), a United States astronomer and optician. Pease made photographic and spectrographic studies of the moon, the planets, star clusters, and nebulae.

Pickering (family)

Pickering, the name of two brothers who were astronomers. They were born in Boston, Massachusetts.

Richard Woolley

Woolley, Richard (1906-1986) was the United Kingdom's astronomer royal from 1956 to 1971.

Rittenhouse, David

Rittenhouse, David (1732-1796), a United States astronomer and mathematician. Next to Benjamin Franklin, he was the most respected American man of science of his time.