Famous People in Astronomy for the CSET

Feb
19

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Excerpt from the CSET study guide

Teacher candidates studying for the CSET subtest II science section should know the famous people in: astronomy, biology, chemistry, and geology.

Pythagoras (582–c.507 B.C)

A pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, Pythagoras of Samos, Ionia, is mostly known through his work as recorded by his followers, the Pythagoreans. His followers believed that everything in the universe, including abstract ideas, could be quantified and expressed in numerical values. Perhaps what Pythogoras is most noted for is his discovery of the Pythagorean theorem. Essentially, the theorem helped other mathematicians including Euclid to form assumptions and help advance the mathematics. In the field of the rising science of pre-astronomy, Pythagoras paved a path for a new astrology that included an element of concrete mathematics, which would prove helpful in the future of astronomy.

The Pythagorean Theorem proves that the sum of the squares of the lengths of the sides of a right triangle is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse. This proof became very helpful in the calculation of astronomical distances.

Pythagoras of Samos is often described as the first pure mathematician. He is an extremely important figure in the development of mathematics yet we know relatively little about his mathematical achievements. Unlike many later Greek mathematicians, where at least we have some of the books which they wrote, we have nothing of Pythagoras’s writings. The society which he led, half religious and half scientific, followed a code of secrecy which certainly means that today Pythagoras is a mysterious figure.

Ptolemy (85 - 165 A.D.)

Ptolemy was bothered that the current universe view could not reproduce or predict accurately certain observed phenomena, such as planetary retrograde motion, and the fact that Mars appears dimmer at times. So he began to devise a new system, whereby he applied Euclid’s geometry to the universe. Under the Ptomlemaic system, planets orbited around the Earth on a deferent, which is simply a circle around Earth. But Ptolemy said that the deferent did not have the earth at the center, but were instead eccentric. An eccentric is a deferent with the earth slightly off-center.

Ptolemy said that planets appear to speed up and slow down because they do not revolve around the earth at a uniform rate. Instead, he found a point, the equant, which was equal

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