 |
 Benjamin Banneker
never let the prejudices of his time stand in the
way of his advancement. As an assistant surveyor
of the nation's capital, he was called upon to
reproduce all the plans from memory after the
lead designer stormed off the job. From 1792 to
1802 he published an annual Farmer's Almanac, for
which he did all the calculations himself. |
 Annie Jump Cannon
classified 225,300 stellar spectra between 1911
and 1915, making her the world's foremost expert
in stellar classifications. She accomplished this
achievement while officially only a temporary
employee of the Harvard College Observatory. |
 Nicolaus Copernicus
was the first to publicly propose that the Earth
moved around the Sun, as opposed to the then
widely held belief that the Earth was the center
of the Solar System and that the Sun therefore
orbited around the Earth. |
 Galileo Galilei
is credited with discovering that gravity pulls
all bodies to earth with the same acceleration,
regardless of their weight. He also discovered
that the Moon does not shine by its own light,
added evidence to Copernicus' theory that the
Earth moves around the Sun, and outlined the
basic ideas of what is today known as the
scientific method. |
 Sir Frederick William
Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781,
proposed the existence of double stars in 1782,
discovered infrared radiation in 1800, and coined
the word "asteroid" in 1802. |
 Johannes Kepler
developed the theories that each planet follows
an oval-shaped path around the Sun and that
planets move faster when they are closer to the
Sun. He also published the first textbook of
astronomy to be based on Copernican principles,
and founded modern optics. |
 Maria Mitchell
discovered a comet in 1847, and then went on to
become the first professional woman astronomer in
the world. |
 David Rittenhouse
used what was likely the first telescope made in
America to watch Venus pass across the Sun in
1768. He maintained detailed records of his
observations and published a number of important
works on astronomy, including one in which he
detailed how to locate the place of a planet in
its orbit. |
 Clyde William
Tombaugh was hired by the Lowell
Observatory after sending detailed drawings of
observations he had made of Mars and Jupiter
using a homemade telescope. It was at Lowell
where, in 1930, he discovered a planet orbiting
beyond Neptune; that planet was subsequently
named Pluto. |
