- Stephen Hawking
Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA, (born 8 January1942) is a British theoretical physicist. Hawking is the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes, and his popular works in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general. - Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer and astrobiologist and a highly successful popularizer of astronomy, astrophysics, and other natural sciences. He pioneered exobiology and promoted the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He is world-famous for writing popular science books and for co-writing and presenting the award-winning 1980 television series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage", … - Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton <small><nowiki>[</nowiki> OS: 25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726<nowiki>]</nowiki></small> was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, and alchemist. His treatise "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", published in 1687, described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, laying the groundwork for classical mechanics, … - Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 - 8 January 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher closely associated with the scientific revolution. His achievements include the first systematic studies of uniformly accelerated motion, improvements to the telescope, a variety of astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo's experiment-based work was a significant break from the abstract approach of Aristotle. - Johannes Kepler
Johannes Kepler (December 27 1571 - November 15 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer and astrologer, and a key figure in the 17th century astronomical revolution. He is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion, codified by later astronomers based on his works "Astronomia nova", "Harmonices Mundi", and "Epitome of Copernican Astronomy". - Phil Plait
Philip Plait (a.k.a. The Bad Astronomer) is an astronomer who runs the website Badastronomy.com. He formerly worked at the physics and astronomy department at Sonoma State University. In early 2007 he resigned his job to write on his new book "Death from the Skies". - Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe, born Tyge Ottesen Brahe, was a Danish nobleman from the region of Scania (in modern-day Sweden), best known today as an early astronomer, though in his lifetime he was also well known as an astrologer and alchemist. The Latinized name Tycho Brahe is usually pronounced or in American English, and or in British English. The original Danish name Tyge Ottesen Brahe is pronounced in Modern Standard Danish as. - William Herschel
Sir Frederick William Herschel, FRS KH (15 November 1738-25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer who became famous for discovering the planet Uranus. He also discovered infrared radiation and made many other discoveries in astronomy. - Edwin Hubble
Edwin Powell Hubble was an American astronomer. He was born to an insurance executive in Marshfield, Missouri and moved to Wheaton, Illinois in 1898. In his younger days, he was noted more for his athletic prowess rather than his intellectual abilities, although he did earn good grades in every subject, except for spelling. He won seven first places and a third place in a single high school track meet in 1906. That year he also set a state record for high jump in Illinois. - Patrick Moore
Sir Alfred Patrick Caldwell-Moore, KBE, HonFRS, FRAS (born 4 March, 1923), known as Patrick Moore, is an English amateur astronomer who has attained legendary status in British astronomy as a writer and television presenter of the subject and who is credited as having done more than any other to raise the profile of astronomy among the British general public. He is a former president of the British Astronomical Association, … - Fred Hoyle
Sir Frederick Hoyle, FRS, (born on June 24, 1915 in Gilstead, Yorkshire, England - August 20, 2001 in Bournemouth, England) was a British astronomer, notable for a number of his theories that run counter to current astronomical opinion, and a writer of science fiction, including a number of books co-authored by his son Geoffrey Hoyle. He spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, and was director of the institute for a number of years. - Nicolaus Copernicus
Nicolaus Copernicus (February 19, 1473 - May 24, 1543) was a European astronomer who formulated the first explicitly heliocentric model of the solar system. His epochal book, "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" ("On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres"), is often conceived as the starting point of modern astronomy, as well as a central and defining epiphany in all the history of science. Among the great polymaths of the Scientific Revolution, … - Hipparchus
Hipparchus (Greek ; ca. 190 BC - ca. 120 BC) was a Greek astronomer, geographer, and mathematician of the Hellenistic period. Hipparchus was born in Nicaea (now Iznik, Turkey), and probably died on the island of Rhodes. He is known to have been a working astronomer at least from 147 BC to 127 BC. Hipparchus is considered the greatest astronomical observer and, by some, the greatest overall astronomer of antiquity. - Charles Messier
Charles Messier was a French astronomer who in 1774 published a catalogue of 45 deep sky objects such as nebulae and star clusters. The purpose of the catalogue was to help comet hunters (like himself) and other astronomical observers to distinguish between permanent and transient objects in the sky. Messier was born in Badonviller in the Lorraine region of France, the 10th of 12 children of catchpole Nicolas Messier and Francoise b. Grandblaise. - Eratosthenes
Eratosthenes (Greek ; 276 BC - 194 BC) was a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer. His contemporaries nicknamed him "beta" (Greek for "number two") because he supposedly proved himself to be the second in the ancient Mediterranean region in many fields. He is noted for devising a system of latitude and longitude, and for being the first known to have calculated the circumference of the Earth. He also made what he thought was a map of the Earth. - Percival Lowell
Percival Lowell was a businessman, author, mathematician, and astronomer who fueled speculation that there were canals on Mars, founded the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and formed the beginning of the effort that led to the discovery of Pluto 14 years after his death. - John Herschel
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet KH (March 7, 1792-May 11, 1871) was an English mathematician, astronomer, chemist, and experimental photographer/inventor. He was the son of astronomer Sir William Herschel and the father of 12 children. Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus. He made many contributions to the science of photography, … - Clyde Tombaugh
Clyde William Tombaugh (1906-1997) was an American astronomer who discovered the dwarf planet Pluto in 1930. Tombaugh was born in Streator, LaSalle County, Illinois. After his family moved to Burdett, Kansas, Tombaugh built his first telescope and sent drawings of his observations of Jupiter and Mars to the Lowell Observatory. These resulted in a job offer. Tombaugh was employed at the Lowell Observatory from 1929 to 1945. - Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley FRS (sometimes "Edmund", November 8, 1656 - January 14, 1742) was an English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist. - Christiaan Huygens
Christiaan Huygens (pronounced in English : ; in Dutch:) (April 14, 1629 - July 8, 1695), was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist; born in The Hague as the son of Constantijn Huygens. He studied law at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange in Breda before turning to science. Historians commonly associate Huygens with the scientific revolution. Huygens generally receives minor credit for his role in the development of modern calculus. - Guillermo Gonzalez
Guillermo Gonzalez (born 1963 in Havana, Cuba) is an astrophysicist and Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. He is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, considered the hub of the intelligent design movement, and a fellow with the International Society for Complexity, Information and Design, which also promotes intelligent design. - Frank Drake
Dr. Frank Donald Drake (born May 28 1930, Chicago) is an American astronomer and astrophysicist. He is most famous for founding SETI and creating the Drake equation. - Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno was an Italian philosopher, priest, cosmologist, and occultist. Bruno is known for his system of mnemonics based upon organized knowledge and as an early proponent of the idea of an infinite and homogeneous universe. Burned at the stake as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition, Bruno is often seen as the first "martyr for science." - Owen Gingerich
Owen Gingerich is professor for astronomy and the history of astronomy at Harvard University; in 1992-93 he chaired Harvard's History of Science Department. His research included solar and stellar atmosphere astronomy, and concentrated on the history of astronomy; he has published numerous papers and books, and has served in several professional societies. - John Flamsteed
John Flamsteed was an English astronomer. Flamsteed was born in Denby, Derbyshire, England, and was educated at Derby School and Jesus College, Cambridge. He was ordained deacon and was preparing to take up a living in Derbyshire, when he was invited to London. On 4 March 1675 he was appointed by royal warrant "The King's Astronomical Observator" - the first British Astronomer Royal, with an allowance of £100 a year. - Hugh Ross
Hugh Norman Ross (born July 24, 1945) is a Canadian-born Old Earth creationist and Christian apologist. An astronomer by training, he has established his own ministry called Reasons To Believe that promotes a form of Old Earth creationism known as progressive creationism. Ross accepts the scientific evidence of the age of the earth and the age of the universe, but he rejects evolution and abiogenesis as explanations for the history and origin of life. - Maria Mitchell
Maria Mitchell (August 1 1818 - June 28 1889) was an American astronomer. - Benjamin Banneker
Benjamin Banneker, originally Banna Ka, or Bannakay (November 9, 1731-October 9, 1806) was a free African American mathematician, astronomer, clockmaker, and publisher. - Max Tegmark
Max Tegmark (born 1967) is a Swedish-American cosmologist. Tegmark is an Associate Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he belongs to the scientific directorate of the "Foundational Questions Institute". As part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey team, he has worked on data analysis, extracting the parameters of the Lambda-CDM model from observational large-scale structure and cosmic microwave background data. - Chris Lintott
Chris Lintott is an astrophysicist. He is best known for his role as co-presenter of the BBC series "The Sky at Night" with Patrick Moore. He is also a co-author of the book "Bang! – The Complete History of the Universe" with Patrick Moore and Queen guitarist Brian May. - Simon Newcomb
Simon Newcomb (March 12 1835 - July 11 1909) was an astronomer and mathematician. Born in the town of Wallace, Nova Scotia, Newcomb had a short apprenticeship to a charlatan herbalist in 1851. He graduated from The Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard (1858, B.S.) and studied mathematics under Prof. Benjamin Peirce. The impecunious Newcomb was often a welcome guest at the Peirce home (Brent, Joseph, infra, p. 288), but later is notable for his jealousy of Prof. - Guy Consolmagno
Brother Guy J. Consolmagno, SJ (born September 19 1952 in Detroit, Michigan), is an American research astronomer and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory. He obtained his B.A. (1974), M.A. (1975) degrees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. (1978) at the University of Arizona, all in Planetary Sciences. After postdoctoral research and teaching at Harvard College Observatory and MIT, … - Neil Degrasse Tyson
Neil deGrasse Tyson (b. October 5, 1958 in New York City) is an African American astrophysicist and, since 1996, the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History on Manhattan's Upper West Side. - Harlow Shapley
Harlow Shapley was an American astronomer. He was born on a farm in Nashville, Missouri, and dropped out of school with only the equivalent of a fifth-grade education. After studying at home and covering crime stories as a newspaper reporter, Shapley returned to complete a six-year highschool program in only two years, graduating as class valedictorian. In 1907, at the age of 22, Harlow Shapley went to study journalism at University of Missouri. - John Jackson
John Jackson was born in Paisley, Renfrewshire, Scotland, on 11th February 1887. He was educated at Paisley Grammar School, studying a range of subjects including the sciences and French and German, but not Latin or Greek, which were compulsory if he intended to sit the entrance examinations for university. Having excelled at science, in particular chemistry, he decided to try for the entrance exam for Glasgow University in spite of not studying the classics. - Terence Dickinson
Terence Dickinson (born 1943) is a leading amateur astronomer and science writer who lives near the rural town of Yarker, Ontario, Canada. He is the editor of SkyNews magazine and an astronomy commentator for Discovery Channel Canada. He has written fourteen books, which are widely regarded as some of the best resources available for beginners in astronomy. Dickinson teaches part-time at St. Lawrence College and the asteroid 5272 Dickinson is named after him. - Christopher Wren
Sir Christopher Wren was a 17th century English designer, astronomer, geometer, and the greatest English architect of his time. Wren designed 53 London churches, including St Paul's Cathedral, as well as many secular buildings of note. He was a founder of the Royal Society (president 1680–82), and his scientific work was highly regarded by Sir Isaac Newton and Blaise Pascal - John Dobson
John Lowry Dobson (born September 14, 1915) is a highly influential amateur astronomer. He is most well known in astronomy circles because his name is attached to the popular Dobsonian telescope design. He is credited for inventing the design, which is used by a large number of amateur astronomers. He is lesser known for his efforts to promote awareness of astronomy through sidewalk astronomy. Dobson's popularity, particularly his association with telescope building, … - J. Allen Hynek
Josef Allen Hynek (May 1, 1910 - April 27, 1986) was a U.S. astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is probably best remembered for his UFO research: Hynek acted as scientific advisor to three consecutive UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force: Project Sign (1947-1949), Project Grudge (1949-1952), and finally, Project Blue Book (1952 to 1969); for decades afterwards, he conducted his own independent UFO research. - Carl Friedrich Gauss
Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss or Gauß (30 April 1777 - 23 February 1855) was a German mathematician and scientist of profound genius who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, electrostatics, astronomy, and optics. Sometimes known as "the prince of mathematicians" and "greatest mathematician since antiquity", …
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