Astronomy
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astro.docxCarl Sagan (1934-1996, American) could be called 'the astronomer of the people'. He popularized the science of astronomy with the general public, and revolutionized science fiction by believing that we are not alone in the universe. He championed the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which continues today with a number of missions to Mars to search for signs of life on that planet.
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995, Indian-born American) made important contributions to the theory of stellar evolution. He found that the limit, now called the Chandrasekhar limit, to the stability of white dwarf stars is 1.4 solar masses: any star larger than this cannot be stable as a white dwarf.
Karl Jansky (1905-1950, American) discovered that radio waves are emanating from space, which led to the science of radio astronomy.
Jan Oort (1900-1992, Dutch) first measured the distance between our solar system and the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and calculated the mass of the Milky Way. An enormous contribution of his was the proposal of a large number of icy comets left over from the formation of the solar system, now known as the Oort Cloud.
Edwin Hubble (1889-1953, American) made an incredible contribution to astronomy and cosmology when he discovered that faraway galaxies are moving away from us. Known as Hubble's Law, the theory states that galaxies recede from each other at a rate proportional to their distance from each other. This concept is a cornerstone of the Big Bang model of the universe.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German) was probably the greatest mind of the twentieth century. His Special Theory of Relativity, proposed in 1905, extended Newtonian Mechanics to very large speeds close to the speed of light. It describes the changes in measurements of physical phenomena when viewed by observers who are in motion relative to the phenomena. In 1915, Einstein extended this further in the General Theory of Relativity, which includes the effects of gravitation. According to this theory, mass and energy determine the geometry of spacetime, and curvatures of spacetime manifest themselves in gravitational forces.
Annie Jump Cannon (1863-1941, American) was a member of the famous group of Harvard astronomers called 'Pickering's Women'. The director of the Harvard College Observatory, Edward Pickering, hired a number of women to sort through and organize mounds of data on the stellar classification of stars. The stars were classified by their spectra, and Annie Cannon was the most prolific and careful of the workers. She single-handedly classified 400,000 stars into the scheme we use today (O B A F G K M), and discovered 300 variable stars. She paved the way for women entering the astronomical field.
Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826, German) discovered dark lines in the spectrum coming from the Sun. He carefully measured the positions of over 300 of these lines, creating a wavelength standard that is still in use today.
Isaac Newton (1643-1727, British) was a mathematician who developed extensive mathematics to describe the astronomical models of Copernicus and Kepler. His Theory of Universal Gravitation was the foundation of Kepler's laws of planetary motion, but it also went further: Newton showed that the laws governing astronomical bodies were the same laws governing motion on the surface of the Earth. Newton's scientific ideas are so complete that they still offer an accurate description of physics today, except for certain cases in which 20th century physics must be used.
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630, German) was Tycho Brahe's assistant and student. He inherited his teacher's extensive collection of astronomical records, and used them to develop three laws of planetary motion. He believed in the Copernican model of the universe, although he found it difficult to fit Tycho's observations of Mars into the model with a circular orbit. He therefore used the idea of elliptical orbits to describe the motions of the planets, which became known as Kepler's first law. His second law states that a line from the Sun to a planet sweeps out equal areas in equal amounts of time. The third law was a masterpiece of simplicity: the square of the number of years of a planet's orbital period is equal to the cube of that planet's average distance from the Sun.
Hipparchus (190-120 B.C., Greek) is widely considered to be the greatest astronomer of ancient times. He compiled the first known star catalog to organize astronomical objects, and also came up with a scale to define the brightnesses of stars. A version of this magnitude system is still used today. He measured the distance from the Earth to the Moon to be 29.5 Earth diameters (we know today that the real value is 30 Earth diameters). Perhaps his greatest discovery was the precession, or wobble, of the Earth's axis, which is caused by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon.
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642, Italian) is the father of observational astronomy. In 1609, he heard about the Dutch invention of the telescope, and built one for himself. Even though his telescope was not very powerful compared to the amateur equipment available today, he was able to make a number of stunning discoveries which changed the face of astronomy. He saw the craters, mountains, and valleys of the Moon, noticed the huge number of stars making up the Milky Way, kept precise records of sunspot activity and the phases of Venus, and discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter. These moons are still called the Galilean Moons today, in honor of the earth-shattering scientific effects of the discovery. During a time when the Earth was still considered to be at the center of the universe, he publicized the fact that other astronomical bodies, such as Jupiter's moons, were clearly revolving around something other than the Earth. Galileo's support of the Copernican model of the universe frightened the Church, which put Galileo on trial in 1633. He was forced to renounce his Copernican views and was held under house arrest for the rest of his life.
