-
Feb 19, 1473
Nicholas Copernicus
A mathmetician and astronomer who formulated the heliocentric model of the universe which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center. -
Dec 14, 1546
Tycho Brahe
astronomer and alchemist and has been described more recently as "the first competent mind in modern astronomy to feel ardently the passion for exact empirical facts." -
Feb 15, 1564
Galileo Galilie
Discovered the phases of Venus. -
Dec 27, 1571
Johannes Kepler
Invented an improved version of the refracting telescope (the Keplerian Telescope) -
Giovanni Cassini
Cassini most notably discovered four satellites of the planet Saturn and noted the division of the rings of Saturn (with the Cassini Division becoming named after him). -
Sir Isaac Newton
By deriving Kepler's laws of planetary motion from his mathematical description of gravity, and then using the same principles to account for the trajectories of comets and other phenomena -
Edmund Haley
An English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist who is best known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley's Comet. -
Charles Messier
A French astronomer most notable for publishing an astronomical catalogue consisting of nebulae and star clusters that came to be known as the 110 "Messier objects". -
William Herschel
British astronomer, technical expert, composer, and brother of Caroline Herschel. He became famous for his discovery of the planet Uranus, along with two of its major moons, Titania and Oberon, and also discovered two moons of Saturn. In addition, he was the first person to discover the existence of infrared radiation. -
Anne Jump Cannon
An American astronomer whose cataloging work was instrumental in the development of contemporary stellar classification. With Edward C. Pickering, she is credited with the creation of the Harvard Classification Scheme, which was the first serious attempt to organize and classify stars based on their temperatures. -
Albert Einstein
A German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). -
Edwin Hubble
An American astronomer who played a crucial role in establishing the field of extragalactic astronomy and is generally regarded as one of the most important observational cosmologists of the 20th century. Hubble is known for showing that the recessional velocity of a galaxy increases with its distance from the earth, implying the universe is expanding. -
Frank Drake
an American astronomer and astrophysicist. He is most notable as one of the pioneers in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, including the founding of SETI. -
Carl Sagan
His contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of Venus. However, he is best known for his contributions to the scientific research of extraterrestrial life, including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation. -
Stephen Hawking
An English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. Among his significant scientific works have been a collaboration with Roger Penrose on gravitational singularity theorems in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes emit radiation, often called Hawking radiation.
