10 Most Influential Astronomers Of All Time

Since the beginning of humanity, the stars have fascinated us as a point of meditation. Friedrich Nietzsche would say that this is what separates us from our animal past: the abstract conception of greatness; our human condition is weighed down by this awareness. We are oppressed by our own capacity! At the heart of it all, unwrapping it all, is space — the beginning of philosophical speculation. More and more today, it continues to be central to our conception of life, the universe, and everything. Singers serenade the vast emptiness, muses bathe in reflected stars, but who are the astronomers that have changed the way we think about these celestial wonders, and in so doing changed the way we think about life?

Here are the top ten, most famous, most influential astronomers of all time …

Oh! You’ve heard of this one, haven’t you? At least, you’re familiar with the Hubble space telescope. This is the only functioning telescope in outer space and has proven to be invaluable to astrophysics and astronomy at large. Although this was only named after Edwin Hubble; it was the work he began in 1922 with the Hooker telescope that grants him an entry in this list. At first, he effectively expanded the universe by proving that its borders were not that of the Milky Way. Then, in 1929, he showed that it is continually expanding with Hubble’s Law: based on Einstein’s General Relativity, the space-time volume of the universe is forever burgeoning. Evolutionists love him for the logical link between Hubble’s Law and the Big Bang.

Very little survives of the works of Hipparchus, yet he is still considered one of the most significant astronomers in history, partly on account of his influence over Ptolemy. He is credited as the father of trigonometry and for introducing numerical data. His are the oldest surviving models of the sun’s and moon’s movements. With these, he was able to calculate the approach of solar eclipses. In the meticulous work, Hipparchus catalogued over a thousand stars: a number not beaten for three centuries.

Edmond Halley was the second Astronomer Royal, much like a poet laureate only less frequently discussed. His discoveries are sometimes tarnished by failing to cite the ideas of those who came before him, which were sometimes plagiarised but more often strong influences. Nevertheless, Halley is to thank for publishing Newton’s Principia, which he later used to predict the comet of 1682 would return in 76 years. This comet still orbits the earth and is referred to as Halley’s comet. His concerns were not strictly interstellar. In 1720, for example, he became one of the first to attempt using scientific research to date an object (the Stone Henge in this instance) — a revolutionary idea in itself!

In 1573, Brahe bravely challenged the celestial sphere theory upheld since Aristotle. His argument was simple: since the heavens were not still (which he proved in the preceding year), they must be imperfect. Brahe was the last of the “naked eye astronomers”; Kepler — who follows linearly — will be the first to rely on telescopes, and was assistant to Brahe during his time as Imperial Astronomer of Bohemia. Together, they tried to map out the exhaustive laws of planetary motion. Fortunately, he was never exhausted. Few have recorded such a vast number of observations. Then again, few had the opportunity before him for Tycho Brahe was one of the first modern models of an intellectual.

We come now to the Newton of France, Pierre-Simon Laplace. His primary concerns were probability and statistics, applied mathematic0-philosophically. It was one of his personal aims (and achievements) to displace the idea that divine intervention was necessary for the stability of the universe.

Laplace preempted the Big Bang theory by proposing that the solar system began as a large but thin gaseous entity. If that is not enough, in his twenty-six year, five-volume project, Mécanique Céleste, Laplace summarised and extended the work of his forerunners from which much can be learned of lost documents and forgotten scientists.