Mikhail Lomonosov was a Russian polymath, scientist and writer, who made important contributions to literature, education, and science. Among his discoveries was the atmosphere of Venus. His spheres of science were natural science, chemistr...

Guillaume Le Gentil was a French astronomer. He discovered what are now known as the Messier objects M32, M36 and M38, as well as the nebulosity in M8, and he was the first to catalogue the dark nebula sometimes known as Le Gentil 3 (in the...

Jeremiah Dixon was an English surveyor and astronomer who is best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason–Dixon line. Dixon was born in Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, Cou...

Joseph-Louis Lagrange was an Italian-born mathematician and astronomer, who lived part of his life in Prussia and part in France, making significant contributions to all fields of analysis, to number theory, and to classical and celestial m...

Sir Frederick William Herschel was a German-born British astronomer and composer who became famous for discovering Uranus. He also discovered infrared radiation and made many other discoveries in astronomy. He played the cello besides th...

Eise Jeltes Eisinga was a Frisian amateur astronomer who built the Eise Eisinga Planetarium in his house in Franeker, Frisia Province in the Netherlands. The orrery still exists and is the oldest functioning planetarium in the world. Alt...

In 1795 Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre was admitted to the Bureau des Longitudes, becoming President in 1800. In 1801 he was appointed secretary to the Académie des Sciences making him the most powerful figure in science in France. In 17...

Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, was an influential French scholar whose work was important to the development of mathematics, statistics, physics, and astronomy. He summarized and extended the work of his predecessors in his five-volume M...

Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss was a German mathematician, who contributed significantly to many fields, including number theory, algebra, statistics, analysis, differential geometry, geodesy, geophysics, electrostatics, astronomy, Matrix theo...

Joseph Ritter von Fraunhofer is known for discovering the dark absorption lines known as Fraunhofer lines in the Sun's spectrum, and for making excellent optical glass and achromatic telescope objectives. In 1814 Fraunhofer invented the...

The Reverend Dr Robert Stirling was a Scottish clergyman, and inventor of the stirling engine. He invented what he called the Heat Economiser (now generally known as the regenerator), a device for improving the thermal/fuel efficiency of a...

Urbain Jean Joseph Le Verrier was a French mathematician who, beginning in 1838, studied the causes of perturbations in the Solar System. His work led to improved knowledge of the masses of the planets, the scale of the Solar System, and th...

Johann Gottfried Galle was a German astronomer at the Berlin Observatory who, with the assistance of student Heinrich Louis d'Arrest, was the first person to view the planet Neptune, and know what he was looking at, on 23 September, 1846. H...

John Adams was an English mathematician and astronomer who predicted the existence of Neptune. While a student at Cambridge he wrote this note (found only after his death) dated Jul. 3, 1841: Formed a design at the beginning of this week of...

Heinrich Louis d'Arrest was a German astronomer, born in Berlin. While still a student at the University of Berlin, d'Arrest was party to Johann Gottfried Galle's search for Neptune. On September 23, 1846, he suggested that a recently drawn...