Astronomy

Greek mathematician and astronomer who created the theory of proportion and the method of exhaustion preserved in Euclid's Elements, and the first geometrical model of planetary motion.

geometry, theory of proportion, astronomy

Greek astronomer of the third century BC who proposed that the Earth rotates and orbits a motionless Sun, and whose surviving treatise measured the sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon by geometry.

astronomy, geometry

Greek geometer of Syracuse who measured areas and volumes of curved figures by exhaustion and founded statics and hydrostatics.

geometry, mechanics, hydrostatics

Hellenistic scholar and head of the Library of Alexandria who measured the circumference of the Earth, drew a gridded world map, founded scientific chronology and gave his name to the prime-number sieve.

geography, geodesy, number theory

Hellenistic geometer, called the Great Geometer in antiquity, whose eight-book Conics named and systematized the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola and who proved the theorem on planetary stationary points.

geometry, conic sections, astronomy

Greek astronomer of the second century BC who built the first known chord table, fitted geometric models of the Sun and Moon to observations, bounded the Moon's distance, compiled a star catalogue and discovered the precession of the equinoxes.

astronomy, trigonometry, geography

Alexandrian astronomer of the second century AD whose Almagest set out the geocentric models, chord table and star catalogue that governed astronomy until Copernicus and Kepler.

astronomy, trigonometry, geography

Alexandrian geometer whose Mathematical Collection preserved much of Greek geometry and contains the hexagon theorem, the cross-ratio lemma and the centroid rule for solids of revolution.

geometry, projective geometry, mechanics

Alexandrian mathematician, astronomer and Platonist teacher who revised the text of Ptolemy's Almagest and was killed by a Christian mob in 415.

astronomy, mathematics, neoplatonic philosophy

Neoplatonist head of the Athenian school whose Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements is the main source for early Greek geometry and contains an influential attempted proof of the parallel postulate.

philosophy, history and philosophy of mathematics, geometry

Author of the Aryabhatiya (499), the earliest surviving Indian mathematical-astronomical treatise by a named author, with a sine table, the kuttaka method, pi as 3.1416 and a rotating Earth.

astronomy, mathematics, trigonometry

Alexandrian Christian commentator on Aristotle who proposed an impressed force for projectiles, argued that falling times barely depend on weight, defined place as extension, denied the aether, and argued from the infinite that the world had a beginning.

natural philosophy, mechanics, cosmology

Author of the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta (628), which gave the first systematic rules for zero and negative numbers, a general quadratic rule, the composition law for x² − Ny² = k, and formulas for cyclic quadrilaterals.

astronomy, mathematics, algebra

Baghdad scholar whose book on al-jabr founded algebra as the systematic solution of equations, whose arithmetic carried Indian decimal numerals and his name (algorithm) to Europe, and who compiled the Zij al-Sindhind and a coordinate geography of the world.

algebra, arithmetic, astronomy

Scholar of Basra and Cairo whose Book of Optics founded the intromission theory of vision on experiment and geometry, and whose Doubts concerning Ptolemy demanded physically realizable planetary models.

optics, astronomy, mathematics

Khwarazmian polymath who measured the Earth's radius from a hilltop, determined longitudes from eclipse timings, systematized trigonometry for astronomy in the Mas'udic Canon, and wrote the classic medieval study of India.

astronomy, trigonometry, geodesy

Persian physician and philosopher whose Book of the Cure recast Aristotelian physics, including a theory of imparted inclination (mayl) for projectiles, and whose Canon of Medicine organized medicine as a science and was taught in Europe for five centuries.

natural philosophy, medicine, logic

Persian mathematician and astronomer who classified and solved cubic equations by intersecting conics, helped design the Jalali calendar, and analysed Euclid's parallel postulate.

algebra, geometry, astronomy

Persian scholar who devised the Tusi couple and equant-free planetary models, made trigonometry an independent discipline, and directed the Maragha observatory.

astronomy, trigonometry, geometry

Founder of the Kerala school, credited by his successors with the infinite series for π, the arctangent, the sine and the cosine, with end-correction terms, two and a half centuries before their European rediscovery.

astronomy, mathematics, infinite series

Fifteenth-century German astronomer who completed the Epitome of the Almagest, wrote the first European textbook of trigonometry and founded one of the first scientific printing presses.

astronomy, trigonometry, mathematical tables

Canon of Warmia whose De revolutionibus (1543) set the Earth in motion around the Sun and fixed the order and relative distances of the planets.

astronomy, mathematics, medicine

Danish nobleman whose observatory on Hven produced the most accurate naked-eye observations ever made, who showed the new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577 lay beyond the Moon, and whose data made Kepler's laws possible.

astronomy, astronomical instrumentation, alchemy

Founder of the mathematical science of motion and of telescopic astronomy, condemned by the Roman Inquisition in 1633 for defending the Copernican system.

mechanics, astronomy, strength of materials

Discoverer of the three laws of planetary motion and founder of modern optics, who made astronomy a physical science.

astronomy, optics, mathematics

Jesuate friar and Bologna professor whose method of indivisibles, with Cavalieri's principle and the quadrature of the higher parabolas, prepared the integral calculus.

geometry, method of indivisibles, logarithms and trigonometry

Observational astronomer who discovered four moons of Saturn and the Cassini division, measured planetary rotation and the solar parallax, and founded a dynasty that directed the Paris Observatory.

astronomy, planetary science, geodesy

Dutch mathematician and physicist who invented the pendulum clock, discovered Titan and the ring of Saturn, founded probability theory in print and proposed the wave theory of light.

mechanics, optics, astronomy

English mathematician and astronomer who rectified the cycloid, stated the law of elastic collision and proved the hyperboloid ruled, then became the architect of St Paul's Cathedral and of London rebuilt after the Great Fire.

geometry, astronomy, mechanics

English experimental philosopher, the Royal Society's first Curator of Experiments, author of Micrographia and of the law of elasticity, and an architect of London's rebuilding after the Great Fire.

experimental physics, elasticity, microscopy

Danish astronomer who showed from the eclipses of Io that light travels at a finite speed, invented the transit instrument and meridian circle, and standardized Danish weights, measures and the calendar.

astronomy, optics, instrument making

First Astronomer Royal, founder of the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and compiler of the British Catalogue of 2,935 stars.

astronomy, positional astronomy, lunar theory

Astronomer who predicted the return of the comet that bears his name, financed and published Newton's Principia, and founded the life table and the magnetic chart.

astronomy, celestial mechanics, geophysics

Third Astronomer Royal, who discovered the aberration of light and the nutation of the Earth's axis.

astronomy, astrometry, optics

Self-taught polymath of the Berlin Academy who proved π irrational, founded photometry, introduced the Lambert map projections and developed the acute-angle hypothesis of the parallel problem.

number theory, geometry, cartography

Comet hunter who recovered Halley's comet in 1759, discovered Lexell's comet and compiled the catalogue of nebulae and star clusters whose M numbers are still in use.

astronomy, comets, nebulae and star clusters

Musician turned astronomer who discovered Uranus and infrared radiation, built the largest telescopes of his age, showed that binary stars orbit each other, and founded the study of the structure of the Milky Way.

astronomy, optics, telescope making

Astronomer who discovered eight comets and several nebulae, reduced William Herschel's survey of the nebulae, indexed Flamsteed's catalogue, and was the first woman in England paid for scientific work.

astronomy, comets, star catalogues

French physicist who co-discovered the Biot–Savart law, founded polarimetry through the laws of optical rotation, and established the extraterrestrial origin of meteorites.

electromagnetism, optics, polarimetry

Founder of modern number theory and the intrinsic geometry of surfaces, and author of least squares, the normal law and Gauss's law.

number theory, algebra, differential geometry

Founder of precision astrometry who measured the first stellar parallax and systematized the functions that bear his name.

astronomy, astrometry, geodesy

Astronomer and physicist who discovered chromatic polarization and magnetism of rotation, championed Fresnel's wave theory, led the Académie des sciences and abolished slavery in the French colonies as minister in 1848.

astronomy, optics, electromagnetism

Bavarian optician who mapped the dark lines of the solar spectrum, introduced the diffraction grating for measuring wavelengths, and made the finest achromatic telescopes of his time.

optics, spectroscopy, optical glass and instrument making

Leipzig astronomer and geometer who introduced barycentric and homogeneous coordinates, the Möbius function and Möbius transformations, and described the one-sided Möbius band.

projective geometry, astronomy, topology

Astronomer and mathematician who surveyed the southern sky, catalogued nebulae and double stars, introduced the notation f^{-1}, and founded much of the chemistry and vocabulary of photography.

astronomy, mathematics, optics

Astronomer Royal for 46 years who fixed the Greenwich meridian and gave his name to the Airy disk, the Airy function, Airy isostasy and the Airy stress function.

astronomy, optics, geodesy

Austrian physicist who in 1842 proposed that the observed frequency of a wave depends on the relative motion of source and observer.

physics, mathematics, astronomy

Astronomer who predicted the position of Neptune from the perturbations of Uranus, found the anomalous advance of Mercury's perihelion, and built the theories of all the major planets.

celestial mechanics, astronomy, meteorology

Experimental physicist who made the first terrestrial measurement of the speed of light, showed that flowing water partly drags light, explained Doppler shifts of spectral lines, and founded interferometric metrology and stellar interferometry.

optics, experimental physics, astronomy

Experimental physicist who measured the speed of light with unprecedented accuracy, invented the interferometer used in the Michelson–Morley experiment, and became the first American Nobel laureate in science.

optics, experimental physics, metrology