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Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
(Cattell 1000:341) [RGM:14|1,500+] (Gottlieb 1000:18) [Kanowitz 50:15] (GPE:35) [CR:136] Polish mathematician, astronomer, and physician;“Copernicus is the ‘master’ who dared to take the first step.”
— Galileo (1597), “Letter to Kepler”
Known as the "next Ptolemy" (Reinhold, 1542), noted for his 1514 forty-page booklet “Little Commentary” (Commentariolus), in which he began to lay out the basics of his heliocentric model of the universe, as opposed to the older geocentric model of the universe, eventually publishing the finalized version as the 1543 On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres, the “first book in nearly 1,400-years to rival Ptolemy’s Almagest” (Repcheck, 2007), which introduced the revolutionary idea to the world that the “earth moves” or that "the earth is moving and the stars are at rest" (Anon, 1542), a view opposed to that of the older 350BC physics model of Aristotle that the earth is the center of the universe and stationary.
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Galileo Galilei(1564-1642)
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Ptolemy (c.100-170)
(Cattell 1000:80) [RGM:98|1,500+] (Murray 4000:12|CS / 6A) (Eells 100:23) (GAE:3) (CR:45) Greco-Egyptian mathematician and astronomer; in his 130AD Syntaxis Mathematica, he supposedly was the first to introduce the zero number; his 150AD Aristotle-based Ptolemaic "geocentric model" (adjacent), was not superseded for some thirteen centuries, namely until Nicolaus Copernicus established the heliocentric model (1543);
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Johannes Kepler(1571-1630)
(Cattell 1000:157) [RGM:18|1,500+] (Murray 4000:4|CS / 2|A) (GAE:4) [CR:100] German mathematician and astronomer; a fabled "last persons to know everything", known for his 1619 three laws of planetary motion, according to which planets, based on the Copernican model, move not in spherical but rather “elliptical” orbits, which he derived from astronomical observations made by Tycho Brahe, that planets move faster at perihelion and slower at aphelion, according to geometric rules, and that "a line between the sun and the planet sweeps equal areas in equal times" (second law), as shown adjacent; his work provided foundations for Isaac Newton’ theory of universal gravitation; down-grade ↓ for believing that planets were moved by angels flapping their wings (see: Ra).
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Isaac Newton(1643-1727)
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Albert Einstein(1879-1955)
(Gottlieb 1000:17) [RGM:2|1,500+] (Murray 4000:9|CS / 2|P) (LGS:1) [Kanowitz 50:2][Cropper 30:1|R] (GPE:1) (HD:52) (RE:76) [CR:737] German physicist, astronomer, and philosopher; his 1919 general theory of relativity predicted the existence of gravitational waves (as shown adjacent).
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Tycho Brahe (1546-1601)
[RGM:78|1,500+] (Murray 4000:7|A) (Gottlieb 1000:202) (Simmons 100:22) (CR:6) Danish astronomer; “For those [observations] that I made in Leipzig in my youth and up to my 21st year, I usually call childish and of doubtful value. Those that I took later until my 28th year [i.e., until 1574] I call juvenile and fairly serviceable. The third group, however, which I made at Uraniborg during approximately the last 21 years with the greatest care and with very accurate instruments at a more mature age, until I was fifty years of age, those I call the observations of my manhood, completely valid and absolutely certain, and this is my opinion of them.”
— Tycho Brahe (1598), description of instruments and scientific work
built on the Copernican model to make is Brahe model of the world (adjacent); colorful character (Ѻ); gather the data, used by Johannes Kepler, to formulate the laws of planetary motion
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Heraclides (387-312BC)
Greek philosopher and astronomer; proposed that the earth rotates on its axis [compare: Ecphantus (c.500BC)]; posited that the soul was light; did battle with Aristotle, supposedly, on the question whether the universe is finite or infinite; and is rumored, according to Simplicius (c.590AD), to have formulated heliocentrism (or at least the precursor model to what Aristarchus (c.240BC) put into book form).—
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Hipparchus(190-120BC)
(Cattell 1000:781) [RGM:637|1,330+] (Murray 4000:10|A) (GAE:8) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician; “Hipparchus was a lover of truth (phila-lēthēs).”
— Ptolemy (c.150), Publication (Ѻ)
founder of trigonometry; famous for his incidental discovery of precession of the equinoxes
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Hans Lipperhey(1570-1619)
(CR:3) German-born Dutch spectacle maker; he is generally credited (Ѻ) with the invention of the telescope or “Dutch perspective glass”; a device he tried to obtain a patent for in 1608; news of this design reached the ears of Galileo, who improved on the designs; on 7 Jan 1610, Galileo had built a new improved 30 power telescope (shown adjacent), and pointed it towards Jupiter, and found three small, bright stars near the planet (Ѻ); that year, he published a small book titled The Starry Messenger, outlining his findings;—
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Giordano Bruno(1548-1600)
“There is no absolute up or down, as Aristotle taught; no absolute position in space; but the position of a body is relative to that of other bodies. Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the center of things.”
— Giordano Bruno (1584), On Cause, Primary Origin, and the One; this, supposedly, is a close paraphrase of Epicurus (“Letter to Herodotus”)
Burned at the stake for refusing to recant his belief in atoms and a universe made of multiple solar systems;
Karl Schwarzschild (1873-1916)
(GPE:95) (CR:2) German physicist and astronomer, noted in radiation thermodynamics, for his 1915 derivation of the so-called the “Schwarzschild radius”, which is the radius of the event horizon of a non-rotating black hole.
