Pioneers of Science: Eighteen Topics and Men of Science (Illustrated)

This book takes its origin in a course of lectures on the history and progress of Astronomy arranged for the author in the year 1887 by three of his colleagues. The lectures having been found interesting, it was natural to write them out in full and publish. If we may claim for them any merit, it consists in their simple statement and explanation of scientific facts and laws. The biographical details are compiled from all readily available sources, there is no novelty or originality about them; though it is hoped that there may be some vividness. The author simply tried to present a living figure of each Pioneer in turn, and to trace his influence on the progress of thought. The topics covered in this book include: (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”, (10) Roemer and Bradley and the Velocity of Light, (11) Lagrange and Laplace – The Stability of the Solar System, and the Nebular Hypothesis, (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 Stellar Planets, (15) The Discovery of Neptune, (16) Comets and Meteors, (17) The Tides, and (18) The Tides, and Planetary Evolution. This edition includes 120 illustrations. It is a pleasure to publish this new, high quality, and affordable edition of this timeless book.