John Couch Adams (1819 – 1892) was a British mathematician and astronomer. His most famous achievement was predicting the existence and position of Neptune, using only mathematician. A devout Wesleyan, he won college prizes for Bible studies.
Sir George Biddell Airy FRS (1801 – 1892) was an English mathematician, astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1835 – 1881. The Christ professing churchgoer has many achievements including his work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics.
Jean-Baptiste Biot (1774 – 1862) was a French physicist, astronomer and mathematician. The Catholic scientist established beyond dispute the stony nature of meteorites.
James Bradley (1693 – 1762) was an English astronomer, Astronomer Royal from 1742. He was a trained Protestant chaplain best known for discovering the aberration of light while attempting to detect stellar parallax.
Nicolas Copernicus (1473 – 1543) was the first astronomer to formulate a scientifically based heliocentric cosmology that displaced the Earth from the centre of the universe. Nicolas was a mathematician, astronomer, physician, clinical scholar, translator, artist, jurist, governor, military leader, diplomat, economist, and Catholic cleric. His work is often regarded as the starting point of modern astronomy and the defining epiphany that began the Scientific Revolution.
Johann Baptist Cysot (1587 – 1657) was a Swiss Jesuit mathematician and astronomer, after whom the lunar crater Cysatus is named.
Sir Arthur Eddington OM (1882 – 1944) was an English astronomer and astrophysicist of the early 20th century. The Eddington limit, the natural limit to the luminosity of stars is named in his honour. He is most famous for his work regarding the Theory of Relativity.
John Flamseed (1646 – 1719) was an English astronomer and the first Astronomer Royal. Initially trained for the church, Flamsteed established the Greenwich observatory and provided Newton with essential data for his calculations. It was he who brought Greenwich to worldwide fame.
Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788 – 1827) was a French protestant who contributed to astronomy his studies of polarized light and established the theory of wave optics.
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) was a Tuscan physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations, and support for Copernicanism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy". The motion of uniformly accelerated objects, taught in nearly all high school and introductory college physics courses, was studied by Galileo as the subject of kinematics. The devout Catholic was forced to recant his heliocentrism and spent the last years of his life under house arrest on orders of the Roman Inquisition.
Francesco Maria Grimaldi (1618 – 1663) was an Italian mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and priest who taught at a Jesuit college in Bologna. He investigated the free fall of objects and he built and used instruments to measure geological features on the Moon.
John Herschel (1792 – 1871) was an English mathematician, astronomer and chemist. Herschel originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named 7 moons of Saturn and 4 moons of Uranus. He surveyed the Southern Skies as his father William Herschel had surveyed before him. Both were at least nominally Christian although John's faith eventually ran deeper.
Sir William Huggins OM FRS (1824 – 1910) was an English and Christian astronomer best known for his pioneering work in astronomical spectroscopy. Huggins was well known for his spectroscopic studies of stars and differentiated between gaseous nebulae and galaxies.
Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630) was a German mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, and a key figure in 17th century Scientific Revolution. The Lutheran astronomer is best known for his eponymous laws of planetary motion.
Johann von Lamont (1805 – 1879) was a Scottish-German astronomer and physicist. The Benedictine educated scientist's most important work was on the magnetism of the Earth. He undertook the task of creating a star catalogue that had about 35,000 entries.
Georges Lemaitre (1894 – 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, honorary prelate, professor of physics and astronomer at the Catholic University of Leuven. Lemaitre proposed what became known as the Bib Bang theory of the Origin of the Universe, which he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom".
Urbain Le Verrier (1811 – 1877) was a French mathematician who specialised in celestial mechanics. The practising Catholic's most famous achievement is his prediction of the existence of the unknown planet Neptune, using only mathematical and astronomical observations of the known planet Uranus.
The Rev Dr Nevil Maskelyne FRS (1732 – 1811) was the fifth English Astronomer Royal. He was ordained as a Protestant minister in 1755 and published an influential nautical almanac and measured the density of the Earth to within 20 percent.
Christian Mayer (1719 – 1783) was a Czech astronomer and teacher. The Jesuit is most noted for pioneering the study of binary stars.
John Philoponus (490 – 570), also known as John Grammarian of Alexandria, was a Christian philosopher and Aristotelian commentator, and the author of a considerable number of philosophical treaties and theological works. He suggested that the stars are made up of the same essential matter as the Earth and emit light because they burn. He attributed the movement of celestial bodies and argued for void (vacuum) between the stars. He was the first to suggest dropping balls of an equal weight from a tower. He was the most cited author in the works of the young Galileo Galilei.
Giuseppi Piazzi (1746 – 1826) was an Italian Theatine monk, mathematician and astronomer. Piazzi discovered the Ceres, today known as the largest member of the asteroid belt.
Canon Alexandre-Gui Pingre (1711 – 1792) was a librarian of the abbey of Sainte Genevieve, an astronomer and Royal Geographer. The Canon of Paris made arduous voyages to observe the passage of Mercury and Venus on the sun.
Cardinal Johannes Regiomontanus (1436 – 1476) was an important German mathematician and astronomer who revived the study of astronomy and mathematics in the Renaissance, preparing the way for the revolution in astronomical knowledge which began in the 16th century.