Related papers: Christopher Clavius astronomer and mathematician
Although the differential calculus was invented by Newton, Kepler established his famous laws 70 years earlier by using the same idea, namely to find a path in a nonuniform field of force by small steps. It is generally not known that…
High-level Chinese cartographic developments predate European innovations by several centuries. Whereas European cartographic progress -- and in particular the search for a practical solution to the perennial "longitude problem" at sea --…
When people mention the mathematical achievements of Euclid, his geometrical achievements always spring to mind. But, his Number-Theoretical achievements (See Books 7, 8 and 9 in his magnum opus \emph{Elements} [1]) are rarely spoken. The…
Nicolas-Auguste Tissot (1824--1897) published a series of papers on cartography in which he introduced a tool which became known later on, among geographers, under the name of the "Tissot indicatrix." This tool was broadly used during the…
In Plato's dialogues Republic and Laws, the most important disciplines for the best education of the rulers of the city are identified with arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. Those disciplines, however, are not intended for practical…
In the seminal essay, "On the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences," physicist Eugene Wigner poses a fundamental philosophical question concerning the relationship between a physical system and our capacity to…
Mikhail Lomonosov (1711-1765) was the eminent Russian polymath and a towering figure of the European Enlightenment. This English translation of Mikhail Lomonosov seminal work "Oration on the Origin of Light " draws from its original Russian…
Einstein's special theory of relativity revolutionized physics by teaching us that space and time are not separate entities, but join as ``spacetime''. His general theory of relativity further taught us that spacetime is not just a stage on…
Throughout human history, people have used sight to learn about the world, but only in relatively recent times the science of light has been developed. Egyptians and Mesopotamians made the first known lenses out of quartz, giving birth to…
Astronomy is a precise and relatively simple science because objects accelerate in a gravitational field at the same rate, irrespective of their composition. Galileo knew this, and Einstein took it as the basis for general relativity.…
Global citizenship plays an important role in today's schools. Many subjects taught in schools have already incorporated such ideas. Science and physics have also followed suit. However, when dealing with astronomy - a topic so seemingly…
In recent centuries the world has become increasingly dominated by empirical evidence and theoretic science in developing worldviews. Advances in science have dictated Roman Catholic doctrine such as the acceptance of Darwinian evolution…
The largest centre for astronomical and astrological study in the fifteenth century was the University of Cracow, which always was under special care of Jagiellonians. The use of astronomy and astrology at Jagiellonian courts in the…
In the mid 18th century both theoretical and practical astronomy were cultivated in Milan by Barnabites and Jesuits. In 1763 R.G. Boscovich was appointed to the chair of mathematics of the University of Pavia in the Duchy of Milan, and the…
Randomness is an unavoidable notion in discussing quantum physics, and this may trigger the curiosity to know more of its cultural history. This text is an invitation to explore the position on the matter of Thomas Aquinas, one of the most…
Part 1 : For more than two millennia, ever since Euclid's geometry, the so called Archimedean Axiom has been accepted without sufficiently explicit awareness of that fact. The effect has been a severe restriction of our views of space-time,…
Raffaello Caverni, a Catholic priest, was a truly lay and anti-establishment intellectual in his opinions both on Darwin and on Galileo. He opposed the mythicization of Galileo, as a rule in Italy after the unification, even though he…
There have been several modifications of how basic calculus has been taught, but very few of these modifications have considered the computational tools available at our disposal. Here, we present a few tools that are easy to develop and…
Grigori Kuzmin was a very gifted dynamicist and one of the towering figures in the distinguished history of the Tartu Observatory. He obtained a number of important results in relative isolation which were later rediscovered in the West.…
Astronomical adaptive optics (AO) has come into its own. Major O/IR telescopes are achieving diffraction-limited imaging; major facilities are being built with AO as an integral part. To the layperson, it may seem that AO has developed…