History of Astronomy


The Sumerians and ancient greeks were expert astronomers. I have not got much data on Sumerian astronomers, but suffice to say that they gave us the degree as a unit of angular measurement as they liked a sexagesimal system and 360 was almost the same as the number of days in a year. The Greeks came later but on quite a few of them I can find enough data to help me fill this page. Among them we find the following people:

Then Christianity took over and thanks to the enlightened and extremely tolerant views of the catholic church, the world returned to being flat and anyone daring to argue otherwise was simply put to death.(Obviously the successive popes had never been on a boat as I am sure the vision of the world as flat was not one held by any sailor, too many sailing facts contradict it).

For viewing our planet Earth as seen from outer space by the various satellites orbiting at present, I highly recommend the Swiss site www.fourmilab.ch.


References were:
  1. "Mass, Length and Time" by Norman Feather. Published by Penguin in 1961. Bought in a 2nd hand bookshop in 1973. Cherished as a treasure ever since.
  2. "The tragedy of the moon" by Isaac Asimov. Published by Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton 1975. I have been a fan of Isaac, both fiction and non-fiction, since 1963.
  3. "A brief history of time" by Stephen W. Hawking. Published by Bantam books. 1993 edition. Stephen answered some of my questions, ... only to cause me to ask new ones as yet unanswered!.
  4. "Black holes and baby universes" by Stephen W. Hawking. Bantam books. 1994 edition. Stephen, you still haven't answered all my questions. What's taking you so long.
  5. "Was Einstein right?" by Clifford M. Will. Oxford University Press. 1995.
  6. "About time. Einstein's unfinished revolution". By Paul Davies. Penguin books. 1995 edition. Where the ever lasting friendly arguments between Bohr and Einstein are best described.
  7. "The first 3 minutes" by Steven Weinberg. Published by Flamingo. 1993 edition. Very interesting book about the beginning of our universe. Just the last section (tables) makes it worth more than what I payed for it.
  8. "Encarta Encyclopedia 96". CD-Rom from Microsoft© . To refresh my memory as to dates. For once Bill Gates, you actually were useful.
  9. My Memory. 1947 edition. Not always reliable since I have been known to suffer from "CRAFT" disease. (If you don't know what craft disease is, sent me an Email and I'll tell you).

All comments and criticisms (especially if you can add to the data and nominate other worthy recipients of Nobel prizes) will be welcome. Email me.