History of Astronomy - 18th to 20th Centuries
History of Astronomy - 18th to 20th Centuries

Compiled by Gary Agranat
GCA7Sky@AOL.Com
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Contents
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Speed of Light - Describes how the speed of light was measured
by Alwyn Botha.
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Mathematicians of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
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The World Great Mathematicians
@ Hong Kong Baptist University, Scientific Computing Laboratory.
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Antoine de Lavoisier (1743-1794). Considered the father of modern chemistry.
By Friends of Lavoisier in France.
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SEDS Messier Database
Includes a biography of Charles Messier and a history,
The Discovery of the Deep Sky Objects.
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A Brief History of Electronics, 1745 - 1820's
Scientists working with the foundations of electricity.
The Millennium Education Group, Dennis Ramsey.
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Eros - The discovery of asteroid's historical background
NEAR mission.

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The Bath Preservation Trust Web-Site - Herschel Museum.
The preserved home of William and Caroline Herschel.
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The World's (once) Largest Telescope:
Lord Rosse and the Birr Castle Telescopes
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BBC - History - Revolutions in Science
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The Transit of Venus and the Quest for the Solar Parallax by David Sellers
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Ivars Peterson's MathTrek - Gauss's Orbits
About the discovery of the asteroid Ceres and Gauss' calculations to determine
its orbit.
- The discovery of
Neptune:
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History of Mathematics @ Mac Tutor
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Sky and Telescope -- Discovery of the Perseids Meteor Shower
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Meteoritics A brief history of the early science of meteorites.
Meteorlab.Com.
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A Brief History of Comets I (until 1950) ESO.
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What is the history of solar physics? and
Great Moments in Solar Physics @
About the Sun by the High Altitude Observatory
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History of Astronomical Spectroscopy @ Laser Stars
- The Royal Institution of Great Britain
has biographies of some prominent physicists who worked there.
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Michael Faraday (1791-1867)
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Joseph von Fraunhofer and the
Fraunhofer Lines he
discovered in the solar spectrum, @
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Homepage.
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Johann Franz Encke - The Discovery of the Short Periodic Comets.
Jens Dengler. Berlin, Germany.
- Norman Lockyer Observatory:
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Osservatorio G.V. Schiaparelli - L'Astronomo Schiaparelli (in Italian)
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MARS by Percival Lowell
- Also see
Les canaux de Mars - Histoire d'un mythe (in French)
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Is Mars Habitable? (1907) A Critical Examination of Professor Lowell's Book
"Mars and Its Canals," With an Alternative Explanation by Alfred Russel Wallace
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Science in Poland - Albert Michelson Michelson-Interferometer.
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History of Electricity & Magnetism by Michael Fowler
My book review of
The Maxwellians Bruce J. Hunt.
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IEEE History Center - Lines and Waves Exhibit
- There are several website about the discovery of the electron in the
Physics Page.

-
History of the Cavendish Laboratory at Cambridge
Includes information about some of the key physicists: e.g., Maxwell,
J.J. Thompson, Rutherford.
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Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College (1856-1876)
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Astronomical Figures - Charles Yerkes
University of Chicago Magazine, February 1997.
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Simon Newcomb (1835-1909): Extent of the Universe 1884
Internet History of Science Sourcebook, Paul Halsall
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Science Museum, National Museum of Science and Technology, London, UK.
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Carmen Giunta's classic chemistry page
- Barry Malpas:
Antique Astronomy Postcards
-
Digital Archive of Historical Astronomy Pictures
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100 Years of Radioactivity History by Didier Verkindt.
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Women Astronomers At the Turn of the Century, 1880 - 1920
-
Reaching for the Stars -
A Century Ago, Women Astronomers at Harvard Made Scientific History
Harvard Gazette, March 1998.
- SDSC - Women in Science
-
Contributions of Women to 20th Century Physics
- See Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin.
-
The History of Mount Wilson Observatory
- Mount Hamilton Lick Observatory History
-
UC Santa Cruz--University Library- Regional History Project
has some oral histories about the Lick Observatory.
Special sections for Relativity
and Albert Einstein.
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Stars and Atoms 1926. By Arthur Eddington.
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Short biographies of The Bruce Medalists
awards by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific since 1898; includes
many prominent astronomers
- A Science Odyssey
PBS mini-series.
A number of pages about key 20th century discoveries and biographies, as well as
some fun presentations.
-
TIME Magazine 100- Scientists & Thinkers of the 20th Century
March 29, 1999.
Includes artilces about Hubble, Einstein, Goddard, Gödel
and Fermi.
-
NOVA Online/Einstein Revealed
- Niels Bohr Institute:
NBI Today and previously.
Briefly recounts some of the development of atomic physics and
quantum mechanics.
- See Subramaniam Chandrasekar.
-
75th Anniversary Astronomical Debate
-
The Planet Mars: A History of Observation and Discovery
by William Sheehan (U of Arizona Press)
- For the discovery of Pluto see:

-
Jan Hendrik Oort - From Comets To The Universe
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Early History of Radio Astronomy NRAO
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My Brother Karl Jansky and his Discovery of Radio Waves from Beyond Earth
Cosmic Search Vol. 1, No. 4 - Fall 1979
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Listening to the Sun Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Solar radio observing in 1952.
- Bell Labs now part of Lucent.
Includes:
-
Caltech Archives Oral Histories Online - Interview with astronomer Jesse L. Greenstein PDF file.
Abstract (from the website): Interview in three sessions in 1982 with Jesse L. Greenstein, DuBridge Professor
of Astrophysics, emeritus. Greenstein discusses his early career at the Yerkes
Observatory of the University of Chicago, under Otto Struve (1937-1948), and his
arrival at Caltech in 1948 to build an astronomy department in the Division of
Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy. He discusses the early partnership
between Caltech and the Carnegie Institution of Washington in running Mount
Wilson and Palomar Observatories, the interactions between observational
astronomy and theoretical astrophysics, and the rise of radio astronomy. Besides
his discussion of his work on stellar composition, the interview contains his
recollections of such twentieth-century pioneers of astronomy and astrophysics as
Struve, Grote Reber, Gerard Kuiper, Edwin Hubble, Fritz Zwicky, Walter Baade,
Rudolph Minkowski, H. P. Robertson, Richard Tolman, and Fred Hoyle—and of
various Caltech principals including Lee DuBridge, Earnest Watson, Arnold
Beckman, and Robert Christy.
He speculates about the scarcity of women astronomers and the
difficulties they face. In an addendum to his interview, he discusses in more
technical detail latter-day changes in instrumentation, the impact of new and
improved detectors, and their contributions to his work on white dwarfs.
-
Caltech Archives Oral Histories Online - Interview with Norman H. Horowitz
In 1965 Dr. Horowitz became chief of JPL's Bioscience section. He
created one of the biology experiments (the pyrolytic release experiment) on board the Viking Mars landers. He
describes his graduate biology education at Cal Tech and Stanford, and then his experience at JPL.
PDF file.
-
The Fall of Parity - The Discovery that Parity is Not Conserved NIST
Virtual Museum.
A historical look at the 1956 discovery that there are physical processes in
our universe that are biased in a left or right-handed way.
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Dream: History of Planetarium
by Mark Chartrand, in IPS Planetarian, September 1973
-
Little Green Men, White Dwarfs or Pulsars?
by Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, about her discovery of Pulsars in 1967,
Cosmic Search Vol. 1, No. 1 - January 1979
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Lyman Spitzer Jr.: 1914 - 1997 @ SolarNews: April 16 1997
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Chandra X-Ray Observatory - Xray Astronomy Field Guide (AXAF)

Has some astronomy history related to x-ray astronomy.
-
History of Cosmic Ray Studies @
Cosmic and Heliospheric Learning Center associated with the
ACE spacecraft.

-
A Brief History of High-Energy Astrophysics (NASA GSFC HEASARC)
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Brief History of Cosmology @
Cambridge Relativity
- Also see:
A Brief History of Cosmology @
History of Mathematics @ Mac Tutor
-
Extrasolar Planets
"The Search for the Extrasolar Planets: A Brief History of the Search,
the Findings and the Future Implications"
by George H. Bell, @ Arizona State University
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Hubble Space Telescope- the development as seen in 1982

A Scientific American article by
John N. Bahcall and Lyman Spitzer, Jr.
- See Related Pages below. Also, historical aspects
are often covered in some way on websites about 20th century-contemporary
work. Be sure to check links listed under the your science subject on my
other pages.
- Also see
Relativity.

- Also see Related Sciences - Physics


History of Astronomy Links - Contents /
Astronomy Homework Research Help / GCA7Sky@AOL.Com /
Original page created October 19, 1997. Revised July 2, 2001.
Updated April 8, 2003.
Mail to: GCA7Sky@AOL.Com
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