Pioneers of Science Cambridge Library Collection - Astronomy Series

Knowing there was no money in science, Vincenzo Galilei wanted his son to become a cloth-dealer. While the young Galileo was disobeying his father and cultivating an unwholesome interest in geometry, Tycho Brahe was maintaining the impoverished Johannes Kepler and his entire family. Not long after this, a certain Cambridge mathematician noticed a strange phenomenon that became known as 'the precession of the equinoxes', before formulating his law of gravity. In this fascinating collection of lectures, first published in 1893, the eminent Professor of Physics Oliver Lodge (1851?1940) takes the reader on a tour of the history of astronomy. Including biographical notes on landmark astronomers, more than a hundred illustrations, and simple explanations of important concepts, this engaging book's range from the geocentric theory of the universe to the discovery of Neptune and the calculation of tides. It remains highly accessible to the general reader today.

Preface; Part I: 1. Copernicus and the motion of the earth; 2. Tycho Brahe and the earliest observatory; 3. Kepler and the laws of planetary motion; 4. Galileo and the invention of the telescope; 5. Galileo and the inquisition; 6. Descartes and his theory of vortices; 7. Sir Isaac Newton; 8. Newton and the law of gravitation; 9. Newton's 'Principia'; Part II: 10. Roemer and Bradley and the velocity of light; 11. Lagrange and Laplace; 12. Herschel and the motion of the fixed stars; 13. The discovery of the asteroids; 14. Bessel - the distances of the stars, and the discovery of the stellar planets; 15. The discovery of Neptune; 16. Comets and meteors; 17. The tides; 18. The tides, and planetary evolution; Index.