Marcelo Gleiser

Marcelo Gleiser (born 19 March 1959) is a

Brazilian physicist and astronomer. He is
currently Professor of Physics and Astronomy
at Dartmouth College.

Biography

Gleiser is a theoretical physicist and author,

and a leading science popularizer. He received
his bachelor's degree in 1981 from the
Pontifcia Universidade Catlica do Rio de
Janeiro, his M.Sc. degree in 1982 from the
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, and
his Ph.D. in 1986 from King's College
London. After this he worked as a postdoc at
Fermilab until 1988 and from then until 1991
at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics. Since 1991, he has taught at Dartmouth
College, where he was awarded the Appleton Professorship of Natural Philosophy in 1999,
and is currently a professor of physics and astronomy.

Gleiser's current research interests include the physics of the early Universe, the nature of
physical complexity, and questions related to the origin of life on Earth and elsewhere in the
Universe. He has contributed seminal ideas in the interface between particle physics and
cosmology, in particular on the dynamics of phase transitions and spontaneous symmetry
breaking. He is the co-discoverer of "oscillons," time-dependent long-lived field
configurations which are present in many physical systems from cosmology to vibrating
grains.[1] Recently, he has pioneered the use of concepts from information theory as a measure
of complexity in Nature.[2] The author of over one hundred papers in peer-reviewed journals,
Gleiser has also published five popular science books in the US: "The Simple Beauty of the
Unexpected" (2016), "The Island of Knowledge", A Tear at the Edge of Creation (2010), The
Prophet and the Astronomer, and The Dancing Universe. Translated in over 15 languages,
Gleiser's books offer a uniquely broad cultural view of science and its relation with religion
and philosophy. "The Prophet and the Astronomer" and "The Dancing Universe" won the
Jabuti Award for best nonfiction in Brazil.
 John Couch Adams

John Couch Adams FRS (5 June 1819 21

January 1892) was a British mathematician
and astronomer. Adams was born in Laneast,
near Launceston, Cornwall, and died in
Cambridge. The Cornish name Couch is
pronounced "cooch".

His most famous achievement was predicting

the existence and position of Neptune, using
only mathematics. The calculations were
made to explain discrepancies with Uranus's
orbit and the laws of Kepler and Newton. At
the same time, but unknown to each other, the
same calculations were made by Urbain Le
Verrier. Le Verrier would send his coordinates to Berlin Observatory astronomer Johann
Gottfried Galle, who confirmed the existence of the planet on 23 September 1846, finding it
within 1 of Le Verrier's predicted location (there was, and to some extent still is, some
controversy over the apportionment of credit for the discovery; see Discovery of Neptune).
He was Lowndean Professor in the University of Cambridge from 1859 until his death. He
won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1866. In 1884, he attended the
International Meridian Conference as a delegate for Britain. A crater on the Moon is jointly
named after him, Walter Sydney Adams and Charles Hitchcock Adams. Neptune's outermost
known ring and the asteroid 1996 Adams are also named after him. The Adams Prize,
presented by the University of Cambridge, commemorates his prediction of the position of
Neptune. His personal library is held at Cambridge University Library.

Early life

Adams was born at Lidcot, a farm at Laneast, [1] near Launceston, Cornwall, the eldest of
seven children. His parents were Thomas Adams (17881859), a poor tenant farmer, and his
wife, Tabitha Knill Grylls (17961866). The family were devout Wesleyans who enjoyed
music and among John's brothers, Thomas became a missionary, George a farmer, and
William Grylls Adams, professor of natural philosophy and astronomy at King's College
London.
Robert Grant Aitken

Robert Grant Aitken (December 31, 1864

October 29, 1951) was an American
astronomer.[1]

Biography

Born in Jackson, California, he attended

Williams College in Massachusetts and
graduated with an undergraduate degree in
1887. From 18871891, he worked as a
mathematics instructor at Livermore,
California, then received his M.A. from
Williams College in 1892. He became a
professor of mathematics at the College of
the Pacific, another liberal arts school.[2] He
was offered an assistant astronomer position
at Lick Observatory in California in 1895.[1]

He began a systematically study of double stars, measuring their positions and calculating
their orbits around one another. From 1899, in collaboration with W. J. Hussey, he
methodically created a very large catalog of such stars. This ongoing work was published in
Lick Observatory bulletins.[2] In 1905, Hussey left and Aitken pressed on with the survey
alone, and by 1915, he had discovered roughly 3,100 new binary stars, with an additional
1,300 discovered by Hussey. The results were published in 1932 and entitled New General
Catalogue of Double Stars Within 120 of the North Pole,[1] with the orbit information
enabling astronomers to calculate stellar mass statistics for a large number of stars. For his
work in cataloguing binary stars, he was awarded the prestigious Bruce Medal in 1926.[2]

During his career, Aitken measured positions and computed orbits for comets and natural
satellites of planets. In 1908 he joined an eclipse expedition to Flint Island in the central
Pacific Ocean. His work Binary Stars was published in 1918, with a second edition published
in 1935.[2] After joining the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 1894, Aitken was elected
to serve as president in 1899 and 1915 of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Wilhelm Beer

Wilhelm Wolff Beer (4 January

1797 27 March 1850) was
a banker and astronomer from Berlin
, Prussia, and the half-brother
of Giacomo Meyerbeer.[1]

Astronomy

Beer's fame derives from his

hobby, astronomy. He built a
private observatory with a
9.5 cm refractor in Tiergarten,
Berlin. Together with Johann
Heinrich Mdler he produced the
first exact map of
the Moon (entitled Mappa
Selenographica) in 1834-1836, and in 1837 published a description of the Moon (Der Mond
nach seinen kosmischen und individuellen Verhltnissen). Both remained the best descriptions
of the Moon for many decades.

In 1830, Beer and Mdler created the first globe of the planet Mars. In 1840 they made a map
of Mars and calculated its rotation period to be 24 h 37 min 22.7 s, only 0.1 seconds different
from the actual period as it is known today.

Other work[edit]

Beer was multi-talented. In addition to his hobby of astronomy, he helped with the
establishment of a railway system in Prussia, and promoted the Jewish community in Berlin.
In his last decade of life, he worked as a writer and politician. In 1849 he was elected as an
MP for the first chamber of the Prussian parliament.

Named after Beer[edit]

The crater Beer on Mars is named in Wilhelm Beer's honor and lies near Mdler. There is also
a crater called Beer on the Moon and an asteroid 1896 Beer.
Nicolaus Copernicus

Nicolaus Copernicus (19

February 1473 24 May 1543)
was a Renaissance- and
Reformation-era mathematician
and astronomer who formulated a
model of the universe that placed
the Sun rather than the Earth at the
center of the universe, likely
independently of Aristarchus of
Samos, who had formulated such a
model some eighteen centuries
earlier. The publication of
Copernicus' model in his book De
revolutionibus orbium coelestium
(On the Revolutions of the
Celestial Spheres), just before his
death in 1543, was a major event in the history of science, triggering the Copernican
Revolution and making an important contribution to the Scientific Revolution.[8]

Copernicus was born and died in Royal Prussia, a region that had been part of the Kingdom
of Poland since 1466. A polyglot and polymath, he obtained a doctorate in canon law and was
also a mathematician, astronomer, physician, classics scholar, translator, governor, diplomat,
and economist. In 1517 he derived a quantity theory of money a key concept in
economics and in 1519 he formulated an economics principle that later came to be called
Gresham's law.[9]

Life

Nicolaus Copernicus was born on 19 February 1473 in the city of Thorn (modern Toru), in
the province of Royal Prussia, in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland. [10][11] His father was a
merchant from Krakw and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Toru merchant. [12]
Nicolaus was the youngest of four children. His brother Andreas (Andrew) became an
Augustinian canon at Frombork (Frauenburg).