Cosmology Timeline

  • 1543

    Nicolaus Copernicus

    Published "De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres)
  • Nov 11, 1572

    Tyco Brahe

    Observed a light brighter than Venus in the night sky.
  • Johannes Kepler

    Published "Astronomia Nova" (New Astronomy)
  • Isaac Newton

    Published "Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica" (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy)
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Presented his discovery of the invairability of planetary mean motions to the Académie des sciences.
  • William Herschel

    Identified Uranus as the seventh planet in our solar system
  • Albert Einstein

    Published paper "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" (On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies) on special and relativity theory
  • Percival Lowell

    Discovered Martian canals and asteroids
  • Henrietta Leavitt

    In some stars the cycle of luminosity is regular and is determined by the actual luminosity of the star.
  • Harlow Shapley

    Concluded our galaxy is 300 000 light years wide, and 30 000 light years thick.
  • Edwin Hubble

    Discovered the existence of other galaxies
  • Georges Lemaître

    Published paper "The Primeval Atom: An Essay on Cosmogony"
  • Willem de Sitter

    Co-Published with Einstein the Einstein-de Sitter model of the universe
  • Fred Hoyle

    Nucleosynthesis, creation of new atomic nuclei, in stars established
  • Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson

    Discovered cosmic microwave background radiation