battles history of astronomy

Aristotle

322 BCE

Aristotle was born in Stagira, Greece, in 384 BC. He attended Plato's academy. Aristotle knew that the earth was a sphere. He proved this by pointing at a shadow by the earth on the moon during a lunar eclipse. This led to calculating the earth’s circumference. He also believed in a geocentrism where everything is evolved around the earth.

Ptolemy

168

Ptolemy was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer and astrologer. He lived in the city of Alexandria, Egypt from 100 AD to 168 AD. He codified the Greek geocentric view of the universe. Ptolemy's system involved at least 80 small circles to explain the motions of the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets known in his time.

Copernicus

1543

Copernicus was a mathematician and astronomer who formed a model where the sun was the center rather than the earth. Copernicus work involved a new cosmological principle originated. It is today called the Genuine Copernican Cosmological Principle and says, "The Universe as observed from any planet looks much the same".

Hans Lippershey

1619

Lippershey was a spectacle-maker. He is commonly associated with the invention of the telescope, because he tried obtaining a patent. It is unknown if he was the first person to invent a telescope. Lippershey observing two children playing with lenses in his shop seeing how far they could see and he decided to make the telescope

Johannes Kepler

1630

Kepler was a astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer. He was well known in the 17th-century scientific revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion. Kepler accepted religious arguments and reasoning into his work. He was 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.

Tycho Brahe

1642

Brahe was a nobleman, astronomer, and writer known for his astronomical and planetary observations. He was born in the then Danish peninsula. His observations were some five times more accurate than the best available observations at the time. His model of the solar system was the moon orbating the earth.

Galileo

1642

Galileo was an astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Has been called "father of observational astronomy" and "father of modern physics". He studied speed and velocity, gravity and free fall. He helped with many observations of many planets.

Giovanni Cassani

1712

Cassini was an mathematician, astronomer and engineer. Cassini was born in Perinaldo, near Imperia. Cassini is known for his work in the fields of astronomy and engineering. Cassini is associated with a number of scientific discoveries, including the first observations of Saturn's moons. His spacecraft that launched in 1997 and plunged into the planet in 2017 was named after him.

Sir Issac Newton

1724

Sir Isaac Newton mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time. Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation. Newton used his mathematical description of gravity to prove Kepler's laws of planetary motion.

William Herschel

1822

Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, composer and brother of fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Herschel constructed his first large telescope in 1774. The Herschel telescopes revealed that many objects called nebulae in the were actually clusters of stars. Eventually he helped discover Uranus.

Percival Lowell

1916

Lowell was an businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars. He founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Lowell became determined to study Mars and astronomy as a full-time career. he also drew maps of the planet Venus. He began observing Venus in detail in mid-1896.

Albert Einstein

1955

Einstein was a theoretical physicist who developed the theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics.The beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field.

Enjar Hertzsprung

1967

Hertzsprung was a chemist and astronomer born in Copenhagen. In the period 1911–1913, together with Henry Norris Russell, he developed the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram. His greatest contribution to astronomy was the development of a classification system for stars to divide them into stage in their development, and luminosity.