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Period: 100 to 168
Claudius Ptolemy
Ptolemy was an astronomer and mathematician. He believed that the Earth was the center of the Universe. The word for earth in Greek is geo, so we call this idea a "geocentric" theory This is important because he was part of the many theories that started to open up other scientist minds to study more into the earth. -
Period: 276 to 194 BCE
Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes was an ancient Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician. He lived from 276 to 194 B.C. Eratosthenes is most famous for making the first accurate measurement of the circumference of the Earth. This is important because with out his discovery we would have been measuring the earth wrong and that could have affected many things todays. -
Period: 1473 to 1543
Nicolaus Copernicus
proposed a model of the solar system that involved the Earth revolving around the sun. The model wasn't completely correct, as astronomers of the time struggled with the backwards path Mars sometimes took. This is important because it eventually changed the way many scientists viewed the solar system. -
Period: 1546 to
Tycho Brahe
- a Danish nobleman and astronomer, and he was one of the individuals whose work helped overturn that belief in favor of a heliocentric model of the universe, with the Sun at the center. This is important because with out him we may have not ever known about the heliocentric model
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Period: 1571 to
Johannes Kepler
discovered three major laws of planetary motion: (1) the planets move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus; (2) the time necessary to traverse any arc of a planetary orbit is proportional to the area of the sector between the central body and that arc and (3) there is an exact relationship between the squares of the planets’ periodic times and the cubes of the radii of their orbits .This is important because it helped us understand how planets work around their surroundings -
Period: to
Sir Isaac Newton
famous for his work on forces, specifically gravity. He calculated three laws describing the motion of forces between objects, known today as Newton's laws This is important because this helped explain ad extend our knowledge on gravity. -
Period: to
Albert Einstein
he discovered a new way of looking at the universe that went beyond current understanding. Einstein suggested that the laws of physics are the same throughout the universe, that the speed of light in a vacuum is constant, and that space and time are linked in an entity known as space-time, which is distorted by gravity. This is important because he opened up peoples mine about space and how the universe functions.