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Ancient Light
Our Changing View of the Universe
Alan Lightman
Harvard University Press, 1991
In the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and lucid exploration of cosmology available today, MIT astrophysicist and science writer Alan Lightman takes the reader on a grand tour of the universe. In this slim volume he explores the history of cosmology, the theories and the evidence, the new discoveries, the outstanding questions, and the controversies.
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Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests
Intellectual Interchange between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic Period
Gabrielle Vail
Harvard University Press, 2010
Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. Contributors to the volume’s thirteen chapters bring an interdisciplinary perspective to understanding the interactions that led to shared content in hieroglyphic codices and mural art. The authors address similarities in artifacts, architectural styles, and building alignments—often produced in regions separated by hundreds of miles—based on their analyses of iconographic, archaeological, linguistic, and epigraphic material. The volume includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in this comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in the Mesoamerican past.
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Edwin Hubble
Mariner of the Nebulae
Gale E. Christianson
University of Chicago Press, 1996
In 1923 Edwin Hubble confirmed the existence of other galaxies. By the
end of the decade, he proved that the universe is expanding, thus laying
the very cornerstone of the big bang theory. A revealing portrait of a
scientific genius at work, this book also offers an incisive narrative
of the history of astronomy, and an evocation of what we see when gazing
at the stars.

"Highly entertaining. . . . Hubble may have been the most important
astronomer since Galileo. Perhaps since Copernicus."—Dick Teresi,
New York Times Book Review

"Hubble's own story has not been adequately told until now. . . . A
riveting portrait of a great scientist and a haunted man, and the best
look we are likely to have of the real Hubble."—Dennis Overby, Los
Angeles Times Book Review

"Displays remarkable strength in its steadfast balance and scrupulous
honesty. The greatness of the discoveries is set off against the
contrasting pettiness of the man."—Hans Christian von Baeyer,
Boston Sunday Globe

"Fascinating. . . . This is one of the most impressive scientific
biographies of recent years."—Kirkus Review, starred review

— "Notable Books for the Year 1995" selection, New York Times Book
Review

—"Best Books of 1995" selection, Library Journal

—Selected as one of the five best science books in 1995 by Carl Sagen,
Washington Post
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Gerard P. Kuiper and the Rise of Modern Planetary Science
Derek W. G. Sears
University of Arizona Press, 2019
Astronomer Gerard P. Kuiper ignored the traditional boundaries of his subject. Using telescopes and the laboratory, he made the solar system a familiar, intriguing place. “It is not astronomy,” complained his colleagues, and they were right. Kuiper had created a new discipline we now call planetary science.

Kuiper was an acclaimed astronomer of binary stars and white dwarfs when he accidentally discovered that Titan, the massive moon of Saturn, had an atmosphere. This turned our understanding of planetary atmospheres on its head, and it set Kuiper on a path of staggering discoveries: Pluto was not a planet, planets around other stars were common, some asteroids were primary while some were just fragments of bigger asteroids, some moons were primary and some were captured asteroids or comets, the atmosphere of Mars was carbon dioxide, and there were two new moons in the sky, one orbiting Uranus and one orbiting Neptune.

He produced a monumental photographic atlas of the Moon at a time when men were landing on our nearest neighbor, and he played an important part in that effort. He also created some of the world’s major observatories in Hawai‘i and Chile. However, most remarkable was that the keys to his success sprang from his wartime activities, which led him to new techniques. This would change everything.

Sears shows a brilliant but at times unpopular man who attracted as much dislike as acclaim. This in-depth history includes some of the twentieth century’s most intriguing scientists, from Harold Urey to Carl Sagan, who worked with—and sometimes against—the father of modern planetary science. Now, as NASA and other space agencies explore the solar system, they take with them many of the ideas and concepts first described by Gerard P. Kuiper.
 
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Herschel at the Cape
Diaries and Correspondence of Sir John Herschel, 1834-1838
Edited by David S. Evans, Terence J. Deeming, Betty Hall Evans, and Stephen Goldfarb
University of Texas Press, 1969

Sir John Herschel, one of the founders of Southern Hemisphere astronomy, was a man of extraordinarily wide interests. He made contributions to botany, geology, and ornithology, as well as to astronomy, chemistry, and mathematics. Throughout his scientific career he kept a diary, recording his public and private life. The diaries from 1834 to 1838, years he spent making astronomical observations at the Cape of Good Hope, are reproduced in this book and prove to be much more than an ordinary scientist’s logbook. They present personal and social history, literary commentaries, the results of close observations of nature and numerous scientific experiments, the excitement of travel, political intrigues, gossip, and philosophical reflections—all interpreted through an alert and versatile mind. In the present transcription, the material has been enriched with selected correspondence of Sir John and his wife Lady Herschel (née Margaret Brodie Stewart).

Sir John devoted his working time at the Cape primarily to a systematic observation of the southern sky, complementing his earlier “sweeping” of the northern sky at Slough, England. He later became one of the founders of photography, but at the Cape he used a simple optical device, the camera lucida, in the production of numerous landscape drawings. Many of these, along with reproductions of sketches contained in the diaries and botanical drawings made by Sir John and Lady Herschel, are used to illustrate this book. Sir John was also a leading figure in the foundation of the educational system of the Cape and a supporter of exploratory expeditions into the interior.

As the son of Sir William Herschel, in his day the most famous British astronomer and the discoverer of the planet Uranus, Sir John was already celebrated when he arrived from England. Every individual of note, resident at the Cape or visiting, went to see him. He was supported in his work by his wife, who ran an enormous establishment and bore a huge family, but who nevertheless found time to travel in the country around the western Cape with him and to assist in his observations.

The diaries and letters are supplemented by especially valuable editorial notes that provide much needed and highly interesting information concerning persons and events mentioned and described by Sir John. All the original manuscript material used in this volume is archived at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Sir John’s camera lucida drawings are from the South African Public Library in Cape Town.

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Making Stars Physical
The Astronomy of Sir John Herschel
Stephen Case
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018
Making Stars Physical offers the first extensive look at the astronomical career of John Herschel, son of William Herschel and one of the leading scientific figures in Britain throughout much of the nineteenth century. Herschel’s astronomical career is usually relegated to a continuation of his father, William’s, sweeps for nebulae. However, as Stephen Case argues, John Herschel was pivotal in establishing the sidereal revolution his father had begun: a shift of attention from the planetary system to the study of nebulous regions in the heavens and speculations on the nature of the Milky Way and the sun’s position within it.

Through John Herschel’s astronomical career—in particular his work on constellation reform, double stars, and variable stars—the study of stellar objects became part of mainstream astronomy. He leveraged his mathematical expertise and his position within the scientific community to make sidereal astronomy accessible even to casual observers, allowing amateurs to make useful observations that could contribute to theories on the nature of stars. With this book, Case shows how Herschel’s work made the stars physical and laid the foundations for modern astrophysics.
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A Man Who Loved the Stars
John A. Brashear
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1988
The inspiring story of a man whose avocation as a stargazer and vocation as a millwright led to his development of lenses, mirrors and other astronomical apparatus. John A. Brashear's technological advances were later employed by astronomers in the United States and Europe.  Brashear also attracted the friendship and financial support of astronomer Samuel Lagley, railroad magnate William Thaw, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave him $20,000 for the construction of Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh. The inspiring story of a man whose avocation as a stargazer and vocation as a millwright led to his development of lenses, mirrors and other astronomical apparatus. John A. Brashear's technological advances were later employed by astronomers in the United States and Europe.  Brashear also attracted the friendship and financial support of astronomer Samuel Lagley, railroad magnate William Thaw, Henry Clay Frick, and Andrew Carnegie, who gave him $20,000 for the construction of Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh.
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The Man Who Painted the Universe
The Story of a Planetarium in the Heart of the North Woods
Ron Legro
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015
As a young boy Frank Kovac Jr. fell deeply in love with stargazing, painting glow-in-the-dark constellations on his bedroom wall and inviting friends to an observatory he built in his Chicago backyard. As he reached adulthood, Kovac did not let go of his childhood dreams of reaching the stars. He began scheming to bring the universe home. While working at a paper mill as a young man, Kovac tirelessly built a 22-foot rotating globe planetarium in the woods. Despite failures and collapses, the amateur astronomer singlehandedly built a North Woods treasure, painting more than 5,000 glowing stars—dot by dot in glowing paints. Today, Kovac and his unique planetarium take visitors to the stars every day.
 
The Man Who Painted the Universe: The Story of a Planetarium in the Heart of the North Woods introduces readers to the mild-mannered astronomy enthusiast whose creativity, ingenuity, fervor, and endurance realized a dream of galactic proportions. The story of this stargazer from Wisconsin’s North Woods so inspired two newspapermen, authors Ron Legro and Avi Lank, that they sought to document the story of the Kovac Planetarium for a new generation of stargazers and dreamers.
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Observing by Hand
Sketching the Nebulae in the Nineteenth Century
Omar W. Nasim
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Today we are all familiar with the iconic pictures of the nebulae produced by the Hubble Space Telescope’s digital cameras. But there was a time, before the successful application of photography to the heavens, in which scientists had to rely on handmade drawings of these mysterious phenomena.
           
Observing by Hand sheds entirely new light on the ways in which the production and reception of handdrawn images of the nebulae in the nineteenth century contributed to astronomical observation. Omar W. Nasim investigates hundreds of unpublished observing books and paper records from six nineteenth-century observers of the nebulae: Sir John Herschel; William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse; William Lassell; Ebenezer Porter Mason; Ernst Wilhelm Leberecht Tempel; and George Phillips Bond. Nasim focuses on the ways in which these observers created and employed their drawings in data-driven procedures, from their choices of artistic materials and techniques to their practices and scientific observation. He examines the ways in which the act of drawing complemented the acts of seeing and knowing, as well as the ways that making pictures was connected to the production of scientific knowledge.
           
An impeccably researched, carefully crafted, and beautifully illustrated piece of historical work, Observing by Hand will delight historians of science, art, and the book, as well as astronomers and philosophers.
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Origins
The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists
Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer
Harvard University Press, 1990
Origins reveals the human being within the scientist in a study of the philosophical, personal, and social factors that enter into the scientific process. Twenty-seven active cosmologists--including Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Vera Rubin, Allan Sandage, Margaret Geller, and Alan Guth--talk candidly about their childhoods and early influences, their motivations, prejudices, and worldviews. The book's lucid introduction traces the explosion of new ideas that has recently shaken cosmological thinking. Origins explores not just the origin of the universe but also the origins of scientific thought.
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Percival Lowell
The Culture and Science of a Boston Brahmin
David Strauss
Harvard University Press, 2001

This engaging and wide-ranging biography casts new light on the life and careers of Percival Lowell. Scion of a wealthy Boston family, elder brother of Harvard President Lawrence and poet Amy, Percival Lowell is best remembered as the astronomer who claimed that intelligent beings had built a network of canals on Mars. But the Lowell who emerges in David Strauss's finely textured portrait was a polymath: not just a self-taught astronomer, but a shrewd investor, skilled photographer, inspired public speaker, and adventure-travel writer whose popular books contributed to an awakening American interest in Japan.

Strauss shows that Lowell consistently followed the same intellectual agenda. One of the principal American disciples of Herbert Spencer, Lowell, in his investigations of Japanese culture, set out to confirm Spencer's notion that Westerners were the highest expression of the evolutionary process. In his brilliant defense of the canals on Mars, Lowell drew on Spencer's claim that planets would develop life-supporting atmospheres over time.

Strauss's charming, somewhat bittersweet tale is the story of a rebellious Boston Brahmin whose outsider mentality, deep commitment to personal freedom, and competence in two cultures all contributed to the very special character of his careers, first as a cultural analyst and then more memorably as an astronomer.

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Selected Papers, Volume 7
The Non-Radial Oscillations of Stars in General Relativity and Other Writings
S. Chandrasekhar
University of Chicago Press, 1997
In these selections readers are treated to a rare opportunity to see the
world through the eyes of one of the twentieth century's most brilliant
and sensitive scientists. Conceived by Chandrasekhar as a supplement to
his Selected Papers, this volume begins with eight papers he
wrote with Valeria Ferrari on the non-radial oscillations of stars. It
then explores some of the themes addressed in Truth and Beauty,
with meditations on the aesthetics of science and the world it examines.
Highlights include: "The Series Paintings of Claude Monet and the
Landscape of General Relativity," "The Perception of Beauty and the
Pursuit of Science," "On Reading Newton's Principia at Age Past
Eighty," and personal recollections of Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru,
and others.

Selected Papers, Volume 7 paints a picture of Chandra's universe,
filled with stars and galaxies, but with space for poetics, paintings,
and politics.

The late S. Chandrasekhar was best known for his discovery of the upper
limit to the mass of a white dwarf star, for which he received the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1983. He was the author of many books, including
The Mathematical Theory of Black Holes and, most recently,
Newton's Principia for the Common Reader.

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The Starry Messenger
George Keithley
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003
"Keithley’s talent is remarkable; he seems to possess Whitman’s visionary imagination, that rare ability to evoke powerful, scaled-down, lyric details in the service of a vast structure."
--American Poetry Review
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Vera Rubin
A Life
Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton
Harvard University Press, 2021

A Physics Today Best Book of the Year

The first biography of a pioneering scientist who made significant contributions to our understanding of dark matter and championed the advancement of women in science.

One of the great lingering mysteries of the universe is dark matter. Scientists are not sure what it is, but most believe it’s out there, and in abundance. The astronomer who finally convinced many of them was Vera Rubin. When Rubin died in 2016, she was regarded as one of the most influential astronomers of her era. Her research on the rotation of spiral galaxies was groundbreaking, and her observations contributed significantly to the confirmation of dark matter, a most notable achievement.

In Vera Rubin: A Life, prolific science writers Jacqueline Mitton and Simon Mitton provide a detailed, accessible overview of Rubin’s work, showing how she leveraged immense curiosity, profound intelligence, and novel technologies to help transform our understanding of the cosmos. But Rubin’s impact was not limited to her contributions to scientific knowledge. She also helped to transform scientific practice by promoting the careers of women researchers. Not content to be an inspiration, Rubin was a mentor and a champion. She advocated for hiring women faculty, inviting women speakers to major conferences, and honoring women with awards that were historically the exclusive province of men.

Rubin’s papers and correspondence yield vivid insights into her life and work, as she faced down gender discrimination and met the demands of family and research throughout a long and influential career. Deftly written, with both scientific experts and general readers in mind, Vera Rubin is a portrait of a woman with insatiable curiosity about the universe who never stopped asking questions and encouraging other women to do the same.

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What Stars Are Made Of
The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Donovan Moore
Harvard University Press, 2020

A New Scientist Book of the Year
A Physics Today Book of the Year
A Science News Book of the Year


The history of science is replete with women getting little notice for their groundbreaking discoveries. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a tireless innovator who correctly theorized the substance of stars, was one of them.

It was not easy being a woman of ambition in early twentieth-century England, much less one who wished to be a scientist. Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin overcame prodigious obstacles to become a woman of many firsts: the first to receive a PhD in astronomy from Radcliffe College, the first promoted to full professor at Harvard, the first to head a department there. And, in what has been called “the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy,” she was the first to describe what stars are made of.

Payne-Gaposchkin lived in a society that did not know what to make of a determined schoolgirl who wanted to know everything. She was derided in college and refused a degree. As a graduate student, she faced formidable skepticism. Revolutionary ideas rarely enjoy instantaneous acceptance, but the learned men of the astronomical community found hers especially hard to take seriously. Though welcomed at the Harvard College Observatory, she worked for years without recognition or status. Still, she accomplished what every scientist yearns for: discovery. She revealed the atomic composition of stars—only to be told that her conclusions were wrong by the very man who would later show her to be correct.

In What Stars Are Made Of, Donovan Moore brings this remarkable woman to life through extensive archival research, family interviews, and photographs. Moore retraces Payne-Gaposchkin’s steps with visits to cramped observatories and nighttime bicycle rides through the streets of Cambridge, England. The result is a story of devotion and tenacity that speaks powerfully to our own time.

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