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Period: 1473 to 1543
Nicolaus Copernicus
Suggested heliocentric model of the universe -
Period: 1546 to
Tycho Brahe
Made the most precise image before telescopes, providing data for other cosmologists -
Period: 1571 to
Johannes Kepler
Planetary Motion -
Period: to
Isaac Newton
Forces between planets, especially gravity -
Period: to
William Herschel
Found Uranus and its two moons. -
Period: to
Pierre-simon Laplace
Applied Newton's theory of gravity to the whole universe -
Period: to
Percival Lowell
Founded the first permanent observatory based on the viewing conditions -
Period: to
Henrietta Leavitt
Gave us a method of calculating distance to stars from brightness -
Period: to
Willem de Sitter
Made models of the universe based on Einstein's general theory of relativity -
Period: to
Albert Einstein
Theory of Relativity -
Period: to
Harlow Shapley
Proved that there were galaxies other than the milky way -
Period: to
Edwin Hubble
Proved universe is expanding, looked at distant stars -
Period: to
Georges Lemaitre
Big Bang Theory -
Period: to
Fred Hoyle
theory of stellar nucleosynthesis, and his infamous rejection of the big bang theory for steady state universe -
Period: to
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
Found cosmic microwave background radiation, which was significant evidence for the big bang theory.