Famous Astronomers

Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi

903 – 986

First to record the Andromeda Galaxy; revised Ptolemy's star catalog

Friedrich Wilhelm August Argelander

1799 – 1875

Created the Bonner Durchmusterung — the most comprehensive star catalog of the 19th century

Aryabhata

476 – 550

Calculated Earth's rotation, eclipses, and the value of pi

Edward Emerson Barnard

1857 – 1923

Discovered Barnard's Star, pioneer of astrophotography

Ulugh Beg

1394 – 1449

Star catalog, Samarkand Observatory

Friedrich Bessel

1784 – 1846

First to measure the distance to a star by parallax

Tycho Brahe

1546 – 1601

Most accurate pre-telescope observations; discovered a supernova

Giordano Bruno

1548 – 1600

Proposed infinite universe with innumerable worlds orbiting other stars

Margaret Burbidge

1919 – 2020

B²FH paper on stellar nucleosynthesis; galaxy rotation curves

Jocelyn Bell Burnell

b. 1943

Discovered pulsars as a graduate student

Annie Jump Cannon

1863 – 1941

Classified 350,000+ stellar spectra; created the spectral classification system

Giovanni Cassini

1625 – 1712

Discovered four Saturn moons and the Cassini Division

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

1910 – 1995

Chandrasekhar limit — maximum mass of a white dwarf star

Nicolaus Copernicus

1473 – 1543

Proposed the heliocentric model of the solar system

Arthur Eddington

1882 – 1944

1919 eclipse expedition confirming general relativity; first theory of stellar interiors; the Eddington limit

Albert Einstein

1879 – 1955

General relativity — reshaped our understanding of gravity, space, and time

Eratosthenes

c. 276 BC – c. 194 BC

First accurate measurement of Earth's circumference; invented geography

Joseph von Fraunhofer

1787 – 1826

Discovered absorption lines in the solar spectrum, pioneered spectroscopy

Galileo Galilei

1564 – 1642

First telescopic observations: Jupiter's moons, lunar craters, Saturn's rings

Andrea Ghez

b. 1965

Nobel Prize for discovering supermassive black hole at the Milky Way's center

George Ellery Hale

1868 – 1938

Greatest telescope builder of the 20th century

Edmond Halley

1656 – 1742

Predicted the return of Halley's Comet; cataloged southern stars

Stephen Hawking

1942 – 2018

Hawking radiation, black hole thermodynamics, popular science icon

Zhang Heng

78 – 139

Celestial globe, first seismoscope, cataloged 2,500 stars

Caroline Herschel

1750 – 1848

Discovered 8 comets and 14 nebulae; first professional woman astronomer

Wilhelm Herschel

1738 – 1822

Discovery of Uranus, infrared radiation, deep sky surveys

Ejnar Hertzsprung

1873 – 1967

Co-creator of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram

Hipparchus

190 BC – 120 BC

First star catalog and stellar magnitude system

Fred Hoyle

1915 – 2001

Stellar nucleosynthesis theory; coined the term 'Big Bang'

Edwin Hubble

1889 – 1953

Proved galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way; discovered the expanding universe

William Huggins

1824 – 1910

Pioneer of astronomical spectroscopy — proved nebulae are gaseous

Christiaan Huygens

1629 – 1695

Discovered Titan; first to correctly describe Saturn's rings

Hypatia

c. 350 – 415

Last great scholar of Alexandria; edited Ptolemy's Almagest; taught astronomy and philosophy

Karl Jansky

1905 – 1950

Discovered extraterrestrial radio waves; father of radio astronomy

Johannes Kepler

1571 – 1630

Three laws of planetary motion; explained elliptical orbits

Gerard Kuiper

1905 – 1973

Kuiper Belt prediction, discovered moons and planetary atmospheres

Pierre-Simon Laplace

1749 – 1827

Celestial mechanics, nebular hypothesis, Laplace's equation

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

1868 – 1921

Discovered the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables

Percival Lowell

1855 – 1916

Founded Lowell Observatory; predicted the existence of Planet X (Pluto)

Charles Messier

1730 – 1817

Created the Messier catalog — the essential list for amateur deep-sky observing

Isaac Newton

1643 – 1727

Laws of gravitation and motion, reflecting telescope, Principia Mathematica

Jan Oort

1900 – 1992

Oort cloud, galactic rotation, pioneer of radio astronomy

William Parsons

1800 – 1867

Built the Leviathan of Parsonstown; first to resolve spiral structure of nebulae

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

1900 – 1979

Proved that stars are composed primarily of hydrogen and helium

Giuseppe Piazzi

1746 – 1826

Discovered the first asteroid, Ceres

Ptolemy

100 – 170

The Almagest — definitive astronomical reference for 1,400 years

Vera Rubin

1928 – 2016

Provided the first strong evidence for dark matter through galaxy rotation curves

Ole Rømer

1644 – 1710

First measurement of the speed of light

Carl Sagan

1934 – 1996

Made astronomy accessible to millions through Cosmos; pioneer of planetary science

Aristarchus of Samos

310 BC – 230 BC

First to propose a heliocentric model of the solar system

Karl Schwarzschild

1873 – 1916

First exact solution to Einstein's field equations; the Schwarzschild radius and the geometry around a non-rotating black hole

Angelo Secchi

1818 – 1878

Pioneer of stellar spectral classification; father of astrophysics

Harlow Shapley

1885 – 1972

Determined the size of the Milky Way and the Sun's off-center position

Kip Thorne

b. 1940

Nobel Prize for gravitational wave detection (LIGO); black hole physics

Clyde Tombaugh

1906 – 1997

Discovered Pluto through painstaking photographic plate comparison

Urbain Le Verrier

1811 – 1877

Predicted the position of Neptune through mathematical calculation alone

Fritz Zwicky

1898 – 1974

First evidence for dark matter; coined the term 'supernova'