John Dee
1527 A.D. – 1608 A.D.
English mathematician and astronomer, Dee drew on
traditional magic and Hermetic philosophy, he believed the
universe was governed by mathematical principles.
William Gilbert
1544 A.D. – 1603 A.D.
English physician and natural philosopher who supported
Copernicus and was highly critical of Aristotelian physics.
He realized that electricity and magnetism were related but
separate phenomena, summarizing his discoveries in de
Magnete.
Tycho Brahe
1546 A.D. – 1601 A.D.
Danish nobleman who built the best observatory of its time
at Hveen. His instruments provided far better measurements
of planetary positions and provided Kepler with the detailed
data leading to his three laws of planetary motion.
Giordano Bruno
1548 A.D. – 1600 A.D.
Italian philosopher and astronomer who supported the
Copernican theory but also believed that the sun was only
one of many similar stars, and not at the center of the
universe. He was convicted of heresy and burned at the
stake for his religious views, not primarily for his support of
heliocentricity.
Galileo Galilei
1564 A.D. – 1642 A.D.
Italian physicist and astronomy who promoted the
Copernican heliocentric theory and criticized Aristotelian
mechanics, fighting the opposition of Italian physicists who
thought Galileo was also criticizing the Church’s
interpretation of Scripture.
Nicolaus Copernicus
Johannes Kepler
1473 A.D. – 1543 A.D.
1571 A.D. – 1630 A.D.
Polish scientist who proposed a heliocentric model of the
universe to replace the geocentric model popularized by
Ptolemy. While it was not possible to prove Copernicus’
theory by direct observational evidence for several
centuries, the theory became the most popular explanation
of planetary motion.
German mathematician and astronomer who realized that
planets move in ellipses with speed that varies with distance
from the sun, and that distance and periodicity are related
by a specific relationship.
Isaac Newton
1643 A.D. – 1727 A.D.
English physicist, mathematician, and astronomer whose
Principia Mathematic demonstrated the consistency
between his own theory of gravity and Kepler’s laws of
planetary motion. He also developed the mathematical
calculus, a method of rate analysis
Scientific Revolution in Astronomy
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