Born in 270 BC, the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos, was the first scientist known to suggest that the earth revolves around the sun. Little is known of the childhood of Aristarchus, as well as his entire life. His only recorded works come from Archimedes and Plutarch, which discuss his ideas of the movement of all the planets in the solar system. Unfortunately, the lack in technological advances greatly affected his observations, making them inaccurate, especially his geometrical equations. The major contribution Aristarchus is known for is a more precise scale of our solar system. Aristarchus of Samos is honored today with a lunar crater named for him, which is also the brightest point on the moon.

Claudius Ptolemaeus, also known as Ptolemy, is considered one of the greatest and most influential astronomers of the

hich helped to prove the Copernican theory. He became world-renowned when, in 1610, he published his findings. Since Galileo discovered a few problems with the Aristotlian theory of motion, he developed his own theory of the motion of free-falling objects. In 1632, Galileo published his Dialogue concerning the two Chief World Systems in which he presented his arguments both for and against the earth centered planetary system and the sun centered planetary system. He was then placed under house arrest in his villa in Florence for these views. He finally died in 1642, but his works and thoughts eventually led to the modern scientific process and modern mathematics.

The German scientist Kepler, born in Weil, Germany in 1571, was the founder of three laws of planetary orbit in the solar system. After graduating from the University of Tubingen, which is where he learned the Copernican theory, began as a teacher at a Lutheran school in Graz, Austia, but soon left for religious persecutions. He soon becomes the assistant of Tycho Brahe in the Prague. Even after the death of his mentor Brahe, Kepler still firmly believed in the Copernican model. To honor his lost mentor, Kepler attempted to find the orbit of Mars to fit the calculations of Brahe. The belief at this time was that the planets moved in perfect circular order, but Kepler could not find proof of this. So Kepler used an ellipse instead, and to his benefit, discovered that it worked. Following the work of Brahe, Kepler stated his three laws of planetary motion. The first law stated that each planetary orbit is an ellipse with the sun as the focus point and the other focuses an empty!

point in space. His second law stated that each of the planets revolve around the sun in a line so that the sun will affect equal areas of the planet at equal times. These two laws were published in Kepler’s “Astronomia Nova”. The final of Kepler’s laws states that the square of the sidereal period of any planet is directly proportional to the cube of its mean distance from the sun. This law was published in “Harmonices Mundi”, and can be reffered to as the harmonic law. This law allows astronomers to calculate the relative differences from the sun to a particular planet from the measurements of its orbital. Kepler also discovered that “K” is not a constant because the mass of the planets, however small, is not quite zeroed.

ll of this in two books, Principia in 1684, and Opticks in 1704. Principia contains the first unified theory of space, which includes his laws of motion and gravitation. He also mentions his three laws of motion, which are considered to be some of the greatest contributions to all of science. In 1705, Newton was knighted by Queen Anne. He died a bachelor in 1727. Soon after the death of Sir Isaac Newton, a quote he wrote of himself was found in his works. It read: “If I have seen further than other men, it is because I have stood upon the shoulders of giants.” This shows that even after all he discovered he believed that the scientists before helped pave the way more than he did.

Thoren, Visctor E. The Lord of Uraniborg: A biography of Tycho Brahe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

ancient world. Almost all of his observations and works were done in Alexandria, Egypt, the home of the largest library and school of the ancient world, which when found, greatly benefited scientists in decoding the ancient astronomers calculations and theories. The life of Ptolomy is vague, as is the reaction to his works at the time. His system of astronomy, which is in his book the Syntaxis, was accepted as correct until the year 1543 AD. In this system, the earth was the center of the universe, and was the axis of a huge rotating sphere, which spun. On the outer edges of the sphere were the stars, and the sun and other heavenly bodies were in between the earth and stars. Ptolomy accounted for the movement o

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