Corinne Calamaro, age 15, of Laguna Beach, Calif., for her question:
WHO WAS THE FIRST ASTRONOMER?
Astronomy is the study of the heavenly bodies, and an astronomer is a person who is involved in astronomy. The science is one of the oldest known. The very earliest men on earth undoubtedly spent a lot of time looking up and thinking about the movement of the sun during the day and the stars at night.
Although many early attempts were made to explain the magic show going on in the skies, it wasn't until the time of Thales of Miletus, who lived from about 640 to 560 B.C., that astronomy was first studied as a science. Thales was one of the Seven Wise Men of ancient Greece and is given credit for being the first to realize that the stars are more than mere signs in the sky.
Thales founded the earliest school of Greek philosophers, developed geometry and put it to such practical uses as measuring the heights of trees and determining the distance of ships from shore. And he also drew maps of the most noticeable stars as they appeared in the heavens, a job that it is thought no man before him had ever attempted
Anaximander, a disciple of Thales, stated that the earth was round and not flat. He knew this because he found the stars were not at the same height in the sky when viewed from Greece and from Egypt.
Pythagoras of Samos was another early Greek astronomer. He came up with some bright ideas about how the planets, sun, moon and stars in the universe turned around each other.
Hipparchus, a Greek born about 190 B.C., was one of the two greatest astronomers of the ancient world. He accurately observed the precision of the equinoxes, developed the branch of mathematics known as trigonometry and accurately calculated the motions of the planets and moon.
Second of the great ancient astronomers was Claudius Ptolemaeuc, known as Ptolemy. He was born in the century after Christ. This Greek scholar did some fine work to advance the study of astronomy, but unfortunately taught his followers that the world was flat and stood still while the sun, stars and planets traveled in complicated circles and loops.
Hundreds of books are full of information on the advance of astronomy through the ages. Copernicus 11473 15431 said the world Was round and that the earth WAq not the center of the universe. Tycho Brahe (1545 1601) worked out with surprising accuracy the positions of more than 700 stars. Galileo Galilei, who was born in Italy in 1564, brought the telescope to astronomy. And this only scratches the surface of information.