Biografien von Astronomen

Stephen Hawking: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies)

Autor: Kristine Larsen

Limitless: The Autobiography: The bestselling story of Britain’s inspirational astronaut

Autor: Tim Peake

The Astronomer Caroline Herschel: A Short Biography (30 Minute Book Series)

Autor: Doug West

80 Not Out: The Autobiography

Autor: Patrick Moore

God's Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe

Amir D. Aczel

Resistencia : un año en el espacio (Ciencia y Tecnología)

Scott Kelly

Great Astronomers

Robert Stawell Ball

Great Astronomers: William Parsons Illustrated

Robert Stawell Ball

Tycho Brahe: A Picture of Scientific Life and Work in the Sixteenth Century

J L E Dreyer

The Scientific Revolution: The Life and Legacy of Johannes Kepler

Charles River Editors

" We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment. " - Johannes Kepler

Just trying to define a man who had the qualities of a mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, inventor, and astrologer can prove difficult. But all of that can be ascribed to Johannes Kepler, one of the giants of his era who ushered in the Scientific Revolution and is often considered the first modern scientist.

Kepler stood at a moment in time when the intellectual worldview of most in northern Europe was medieval in nature, influenced mostly by spirituality, mysticism, religion, and metaphysics. Kepler, however, was far-thinking in his outlook, taking advantages of the latest technological ideas from the Renaissance and the new translations of Greco-Roman philosophers from out of the Spanish kingdoms and the former-Byzantine Empire. Kepler himself struggled with the seemingly incongruous division between metaphysics and empiricism. By practicing empiricism and coming up with his famous laws of planetary motion, he was forced to defend his positions against a number of important ideas in western philosophy and the contemporary understanding of nature and the cosmos. All the while, Kepler was never able to escape the medieval mind he possessed, and he looked for God in the designs of the cosmos, thus attempting to wed the supernatural to the physical.

What Einstein Got Wrong

Dan Hooper, The Great Courses

These 12 half-hour lectures are about what Einstein got wrong. He may have kindled a scientific revolution with his famous theory of relativity and his proof that atoms and light quanta exist, but he balked at accepting the most startling implications of these theories - such as the existence of black holes, the big bang, gravity waves, and mind-bendingly strange phenomena in the quantum realm. In a course that assumes no background in science and uses very little math, research physicist Dan Hooper of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Chicago focuses on Einstein's personal qualities that made him a heavy hitter with relativity but also a strikeout king in many of his other ideas.

You start with two lectures on Einstein's special and general theories of relativity, and in a later lecture you cover his founding role in quantum theory. All are titanic achievements. The balance of the course deals with his false starts, blind alleys, and outright blunders, which are fascinating for what they reveal about the give-and-take conduct of science. For example, the possibility of black holes, which are infinitely dense concentrations of matter, emerged from the equations of general relativity. However, the idea seemed so absurd to Einstein that he believed something in nature must prevent black holes from forming. He was wrong. Similar considerations led him to doubt the existence of gravity waves, insist that the universe must be static and eternal, and hold out for a deterministic theory that would solve the weird paradoxes of quantum mechanics. Again, he was wrong. Dr. Hooper closes with a lecture on the missteps of other great physicists - Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, and Isaac Newton - proving that Einstein is in good company. Even geniuses struggle to find the truth.

P L E A S E N O T E: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.

Galileo Galilei: Biografie Storiche

Roberta Dalessandro

Kepler and the Universe: How One Man Revolutionized Astronomy

David K. Love

Clyde Tombaugh: Discoverer of Planet Pluto (Sky & Telescope Observer's Guides)

David Levy

Astronomen