Hypatia is unique among many ancient scholars and philosophers, she was a woman. But her gender is not her sole claim to fame. She was a great teacher, scholar, mathematician, philosopher, scientist, and compiler and preserver of important scientific writings. Hypatia was born in 370 AD in the center of learning that was Alexandria, Egypt. Her father was Theon, a famous mathematician-philosopher. Undoubtedly, her learned father trained and taught her, and together, they later collaborated in writing certain commentaries to [...]

Aristotle is often touted as one of the founding fathers of science. Trained by the great philosopher Plato, Aristotle built a school he called the Lyceum at Athens. He delved into almost all dimensions of knowledge, including philosophy, science, art, literature, and of course astronomy. Based on his writings, Aristotle believed that the cosmos is round and finite. He believed that the cosmos is round in as much as it has a center, which is the earth. He also believed [...]

Photo by: Creative Commons Hipparchus, a famous Greek mathematician and astronomer, was born in 190 BC in what is now Turkey. He may not be as famous today as Euclid, Pythagoras and other Greek luminaries, but during his time, he was greatly renowned. His mathematical achievements were considered exceptional by his contemporaries and many future generations. Simply put, he was a legend, and his face adorned coins that were in circulation for many decades in that period.

Edwin Hubble, born on November 1889, was an American astronomer who revolutionized man’s point of view on the Universe. Through his observations of movement and light spectrum in space, he had proven that there are other groups of stars in outer space. He is best known for the Hubble Law. There are observable “redshifts” or Doppler shifts in the visible spectra of other galaxies. His law states that the degree of redshift is proportional to the galaxy’s distance from the [...]

Thales lived around 580 BC in Miletus, Greece. Like many prominent Greek scholars, he was adept in not just one but many fields of knowledge. Thales was an accomplished mathematician, philosopher and physicist. In fact, he is often referred to as the “Father of Physics,” and he was one of the “Seven Sages,” Greece’s seven most acclaimed philosophers. Thales was also active in politics and education. But his main profession when he was alive was as an engineer. One of [...]

Eratosthenes was a prominent Greek mathematician, astronomer and geographer who lived between 276 BC and 194 BC. He was born in what is now Libya, to parents who were probably Chaldean. Eratosthenes is famous for many things, including a mapping method that used latitudes and longitudes, and his accurate computation of the circumference of earth. To compute for the circumference of the earth, Eratosthenes used the principles of trigonometry and available data on the altitude of the sun in two [...]

Charles Messier is a well-known astronomer from France who is recognized for publishing his astronomical catalogue. This contains the 103 Messier objects, which are deep sky objects such as the star clusters and nebulae. The objects were identified with the letter M and a number such as the Andromeda nebula is referred as M31. Because of his excellent work, he was called “My Little Comet Ferret” by King Louis XV.