Through Distant Worlds and Times was written by an astronomer whose first fundamental contribution to global science was what?
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Through Distant Worlds and Times Through Distant Worlds and Times or Through Distant Worlds and Times: Letters from a Wayfarer in the Universe is a romantic scientific story written by Milutin Milanković, the Serbian mathematician, astronomer, geophysicist and climatologist, in the form of letters to an anonymous young woman.
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Milutin Milanković Milutin Milanković (, pronounced ] ; 28 May 1879 – 12 December 1958) was a Serbian mathematician, astronomer, climatologist, geophysicist, civil engineer and popularizer of science. Milanković gave two fundamental contributions to global science. The first contribution is the "Canon of the Earth’s Insolation", which characterizes the climates of all the planets of the Solar system. The second contribution is the explanation of Earth's long-term climate changes caused by changes in the position of the Earth in comparison to the Sun, now known as Milankovitch cycles. This explained the ice ages occurring in the geological past of the Earth, as well as the climate changes on the Earth which can be expected in the future. He founded planetary climatology by calculating temperatures of the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere as well as the temperature conditions on planets of the inner Solar system, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and the Moon, as well as the depth of the atmosphere of the outer planets. He demonstrated the interrelatedness of celestial mechanics and the Earth sciences, and enabled consistent transition from celestial mechanics to the Earth sciences and transformation of descriptive sciences into exact ones.
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Anura C. Perera Anura C. Perera (born 18 June 1947) is a Sri Lankan science writer and astronomer. He resides in the United States.
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Johann Heinrich Lambert Johann Heinrich Lambert (] , "Jean-Henri Lambert" in French; 26 August 1728 – 25 September 1777) was a Swiss polymath who made important contributions to the subjects of mathematics, physics (particularly optics), philosophy, astronomy and map projections.
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Johann Euler Johann Albrecht Euler (27 November 1734 – 17 September 1800) was a Swiss-Russian astronomer and mathematician. Also known as "Johann Albert Euler" or "John-Albert Euler", he was the first child born to the great Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), who had emigrated [for the first time] to Saint-Petersburg on 17 May 1727. His mother was Katharina Gsell (1707–1773) whose maternal grandmother was the famous scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) and whose father was the Swiss Baroque painter Georg Gsell (1673–1740) who had emigrated to Russia in 1716. Katharina married Leonhard Euler on 7 January 1734 and Johann Albert would be the eldest of their 13 children (only 5 of whom survived childhood).
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William Ernest Cooke William Ernest Cooke (25 July 1863 – 7 November 1947), generally referred to as "W. Ernest Cooke" or informally "Ernest Cooke", was an Australian astronomer, credited with a number of important scientific breakthroughs and improved methodologies in astronomical observations and star cataloguing. He was the first Western Australian Government Astronomer and established the Perth Observatory as one of the best equipped and productive establishments of its type in Australia.
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Martin Ryle Sir Martin Ryle FRS (27 September 1918 – 14 October 1984) was an English radio astronomer who developed revolutionary radio telescope systems (see e.g. aperture synthesis) and used them for accurate location and imaging of weak radio sources. In 1946 Ryle and Vonberg were the first people to publish interferometric astronomical measurements at radio wavelengths, although Joseph Pawsey from the University of Sydney claimed to have actually made interferometric measurements earlier in the same year. With improved equipment, Ryle observed the most distant known galaxies in the universe at that time. He was the first Professor of Radio Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, and founding director of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. He was Astronomer Royal from 1972 to 1982. Ryle and Antony Hewish shared the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974, the first Nobel prize awarded in recognition of astronomical research.
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International Halley Watch Halley's Comet, named after English astronomer Edmund Halley who first demonstrated its periodicity, returns to the vicinity of the Sun and Earth approximately every 76 years. Since comets are believed to be the most primordial objects in the solar system, their study is of great importance to planetary science. At the time of the 1986 return (technically, "apparition") of the comet, astronomical telescopes and related instrumentation were vastly more sensitive than for any previous apparition. Consequently, the International Halley Watch (IHW) was organized to stimulate, standardize, collect, and archive observations of the comet.
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Christian T. Elvey Christian Thomas Elvey (April 1, 1899 – March 1, 1970) was an American astronomer and geophysicist.
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Alfred Harrison Joy Alfred Harrison Joy (September 23, 1882, Greenville, Illinois – April 18, 1973, Pasadena, California) was an astronomer best known for his work on stellar distances, the radial motion of stars, and variable stars.
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Bart Bok Bartholomeus Jan "Bart" Bok (April 28, 1906 – August 5, 1983) was a Dutch-born American astronomer, teacher, and lecturer. He is best known for his work on the structure and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy, and for the discovery of Bok globules, which are small, densely dark clouds of interstellar gas and dust that can be seen silhouetted against brighter backgrounds. Bok suggested that these globules may be in the process of contracting, before forming into stars.
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Frédéric Petit (astronomer) Frédéric Petit (Muret, 1810 – Toulouse, 1865) was a French astronomer. He was the first director of the Toulouse Observatory, located in Toulouse, France, serving from 1838–1865. In 1846 he announced that he had discovered a second moon of Earth. The theory was later dismissed by his peers, although the concept of a second smaller satellite of the Earth was used by Jules Verne in his novel "From the Earth to the Moon".
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Eric Chaisson Eric J. Chaisson (pronounced "chase-on", born on October 26, 1946 in Lowell, Massachusetts) is an American astrophysicist best known for his research, teaching, and writing on the interdisciplinary science of cosmic evolution. He is also noted for his telescopic observations of interstellar clouds and emission nebulae of the Milky Way Galaxy, his empirical attempt to unify complexity science utilizing the technical concept of energy rate density, and his global leadership in improving science education nationally and internationally. He conducts research at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and teaches natural science at Harvard University.
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Jean-Baptiste Biot Jean-Baptiste Biot (] ; 21 April 1774 – 3 February 1862) was a French physicist, astronomer, and mathematician who established the reality of meteorites, made an early balloon flight, and studied the polarization of light. The mineral biotite was named in his honor.
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Nicolas Fatio de Duillier Nicolas Fatio de Duillier {'1': ", '2': ", '3': ", '4': "} (also spelled Faccio or Facio; 16 February 1664 – 12 May 1753) was a Swiss-born mathematician, natural philosopher, and inventor. He spent much of his adult life in England and Holland. Fatio is known for his work on the zodiacal light problem in astronomy, for originating the "push" or "shadow" theory of gravitation, for his close association with both Christiaan Huygens and Isaac Newton, and for his role in the Newton v. Leibniz calculus controversy. He also invented and developed the first method for fabricating jewel bearings for mechanical watches and clocks.
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A. Grace Cook Alice Grace Cook (1877 - 27 May 1958), known as Grace Cook or A. Grace Cook was a British astronomer. She joined the British Astronomical Association in 1911, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1916, part of the first group of women elected as fellows. She was renowned for her work observing meteors, and also observed naked-eye phenomena including the zodiacal light and aurorae. During World War One Cook, with Fiammetta Wilson, headed the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section. Cook observed comets and Milky Way novae and was among the discoverers of V603 Aquilae, a nova that occurred in 1918. This work earned her the Edward C. Pickering Fellowship from the Maria Mitchell Association in 1920–1921. From 1921 to 1923 Cook was sole director of the British Astronomical Association's Meteor Section. With Joseph Alfred Hardcastle, Cook worked to identify and describe 785 New General Catalogue objects on a series of photographic plates taken by John Franklin-Adams.
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Helioseismology Helioseismology is the process of inferring the internal structure and kinematics of the Sun from the propagation of seismic waves, particularly acoustic waves (p waves) and surface gravity waves (f waves). It was developed by analogy to geoseismology (originally called simply seismology), and subsequently there emerged asteroseismology, in which seismic waves are analysed to constrain the internal structures of other stars. Because the Sun is fluid, to a first approximation it cannot support shear waves (s-waves), unlike the seismic waves on Earth. An exception is the magneto-acoustic waves which appear to be important only in the atmosphere. The helioseismic waves are generated by the turbulence in the convection zone immediately beneath the Sun's surface. Certain frequencies are amplified by constructive interference, leading to resonance. In other words, the turbulence "rings" the sun like a bell. The resonant waves are reflected near the photosphere, the visible surface of the sun, where they can be observed. The oscillations are detectable in almost any time series of solar images, but are best observed by measuring the Doppler shift of atmospheric absorption lines. Details of the propagation of the seismic waves through the Sun, inferred from the resonant frequencies, reveal the Sun's inner structure, allowing astrophysicists to develop an extremely detailed representation of the hydrostatic stratification and the internal angular velocity. That has permitted the evaluation of the quadrupole moment, formula_1, and higher-order moments of the Sun's external gravitational potential. It is a more accurate and more robust procedure than trying to infer it from the oblateness of the visible disc. Together with measurements of the orbits of Mercury and of spacecraft, the result is consistent with General Relativity.
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John William Draper John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an English-American scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and the first detailed photograph of the moon in 1840. He was also the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of Medicine. One of Draper's books, the "History of the Conflict between Religion and Science", popularised the conflict thesis proposing intrinsic hostility in the relationship between religion and science. It was widely read, and was translated into several languages. His son, Henry Draper, and his granddaughter, Antonia Maury, were astronomers, her younger sister, Carlotta Maury was a paleontologist, and his eldest son, John Christopher Draper, was a chemist.
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Jitendra Jatashankar Rawal Jitendra Jatashankar Rawal (born March 30, 1943) is an Indian astrophysicist and scientific educator, recognized for his work in the popularisation of science.
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Ali Qushji Ala al-Dīn Ali ibn Muhammed (1403 – 16 December 1474), known as Ali Qushji (Ottoman Turkish/Persian language: علی قوشچی, "kuşçu" – falconer in Turkish; Latin: "Ali Kushgii") was an astronomer, mathematician and physicist originally from Samarkand, who settled in the Ottoman Empire some time before 1472. As a disciple of Ulugh Beg, he is best known for the development of astronomical physics independent from natural philosophy, and for providing empirical evidence for the Earth's rotation in his treatise, "Concerning the Supposed Dependence of Astronomy upon Philosophy". In addition to his contributions to Ulugh Beg's famous work Zij-i-Sultani and to the founding of Sahn-ı Seman Medrese, one of the first centers for the study of various traditional Islamic sciences in the Ottoman caliphate, Ali Kuşçu was also the author of several scientific works and textbooks on astronomy.
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Vera Rubin Vera Cooper Rubin (July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted angular motion of galaxies and the observed motion, by studying galactic rotation curves. This phenomenon became known as the galaxy rotation problem, and was evidence of the existence of dark matter. Although initially met with skepticism, Rubin's results were confirmed over subsequent decades. Her legacy was described by "The New York Times" as "ushering in a Copernican-scale change" in cosmological theory.
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Carl Friedrich Gauss Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss ( ; German: "Gauß" , ] ; Latin: "Carolus Fridericus Gauss" ) (30 April 177723 February 1855) was a German mathematician who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, mechanics, electrostatics, magnetic fields, astronomy, matrix theory, and optics.