Owen Gingerich Is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science at the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Owen Gingerich is Professor emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science at the Harvard- Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Trained as an astrophysicist, by the 1970s his interests turned increasingly to the history of science because of the broader base for learning how science functions in our understanding of the cosmos. He has chaired Harvard’s History of Science Department, headed the US National Committee for the International Astronomical Union, and served as vice president of the American Philosophical Society, America’s oldest learned academy. An expert on the scientific revolution that took place with Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton, Gingerich has personally examined nearly 600 copies of Copernicus’ pioneering treatise in a search for annotations to discover early readers’ opinions concerning the novel heliocentric cosmology. He also researches the history of 20th-century cosmology, and continues to serve on the selection committee for the $500,000 Gruber Prize in Cosmology. Gingerich has lectured widely and written from a Christian perspective on the role of science and faith. He is particularly interested in the implications of the remarkable nuclear structure of the carbon atom, without which the abundance of carbon would be too low for abundant life in the cosmos. His books include God’s Universe and God’s Planet, both from Harvard University Press. His essay on “Our Imperiled World,” presented to the United Nations General Assembly in 2012, discussed the environmental threats to creatures great and small. Passionate travelers, Gingerich and his wife have visited every continent, generally bringing back shells for their collection of roughly 2,000 mollusc species. Enthusiasts for natural history, they enjoy making lists of bird sightings, and they have observed a dozen total solar eclipses. An asteroid has been named Gingerich in his honor. .

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Copernicus and the University of Cracow
Appendix D Copernicus and the University of Cracow No one who was associated with the university in the fifteenth century is more widely known today than Copernicus. As “Nicholas, the son of Nicholas of Toruń” he matricu- lated there in the winter (i.e., the fall) semester of 1491 during the ninth rectorship of Master Matthew of Kobylin, Professor of Theology.1 His later fame as canon of Warmia, economist, physician, humanist and—above all—astronomer and creator of what has traditionally been called “the Copernican Revolution,” has understandably raised many questions about what was responsible for his accomplishments.2 It has been 1 Metryka, 1, 498. The editors note that the manuscript page on which his registration is found has been badly damaged and is difficult to read. Due to Copernicus’ later fame, it has been opened, examined, and displayed many times. 2 There is an enormous bibliography on Copernicus. The most reliable English treatment of his biography is still, I believe, that by Edward Rosen in his Three Copernican Treatises, 3rd ed., (New York: Octogan Books, 1973), 313–408 (see also 197–312 for an excellent bibliogra- phy covering material to the early 1970s). More recent bibliography is cited in subsequent notes. In Polish, a short, authoritative biography is provided by Jerzy Dobrzycki and Leszek Hajdukiewicz in PSB, 14, 3–16. For additional materials, published during or in associa- tion with the “Rok Kopernika” of 1973 (i.e., the 500th anniversary of his birth), see Nicholas Steneck, ed., Science and Society, Past, Present, and Future (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1973); Robert S.
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Owen Gingerich “On the Nature of Science” October 8–10, 2013 “On the Nature of Science”
Owen Gingerich “On the Nature of Science” October 8–10, 2013 “On the Nature of Science” October 8 Was Copernicus Right? October 9 Was Darwin Right? October 10 Was Hoyle Right? October 8–10, 2013 Ken Olsen Science Center 4 P.M. Reception, Loggia 4:30 P.M. Lecture, MacDonald Auditorium Gordon College is partnering with the John Templeton Foundation to honor the pioneering work of Dr. Robert Herrmann, who throughout his distinguished career addressed the “Big Questions” surrounding science and religion. The unique three-part format enables a world-class thinker to develop an in-depth, original perspective on a topic on the threshold of science and religion. These lectures are free and open to the public. FOR UPDATES PLEASE FOLLOW: @HerrmannLecture Owen Gingerich Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Owen Gingerich’s research interests have ranged from the recomputation of an ancient Babylonian mathematical table to the interpretation of stellar spectra. He is co-author of two successive standard models for the solar atmosphere, the first to take into account rocket and satellite observations of the sun; the second of these papers has received over 700 literature citations. In recent decades Professor Gingerich has become a leading authority on the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler and on Nicholas Copernicus, the 16th- century cosmologist who proposed the heliocentric system. The Harvard-Smithsonian astronomer undertook a three-decade-long personal survey of Copernicus’ great book De revolutionibus, examining over 580 16th-century copies in libraries scattered throughout Europe and North America, as well as in China, Japan and Australia.
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3A. to Be Or Not to Be
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Islamic Astronomy by Owen Gingerich
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International Astronomical Union Union Astronomique Internationale
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Proof, Persuasion, and the Galileo Affair
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Is Pluto a Planet? By: National Geographic Kids (Adapted by Have Fun Teaching) Many People Are Saying That Pluto Is No Longer a Planet
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Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus,1566 Special Collections Featured Item for June 2005 by Carol Speirs, Rare Book Cataloguer
Carol Speirs Section name Librar y Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus,1566 Special Collections featured item for June 2005 by Carol Speirs, Rare Book Cataloguer Nicolaus Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (2nd edition, Basel: Ex Officina Henricpetrina, 1566) Item held in the Henley Parish Collection , University of Reading Library Special Collections Owen Gingerich, a Harvard professor, was inspired by Arthur Koestler’s claim in his book The sleepwalkers (a best selling history of early astronomy published in 1959) that nobody had read Copernicus’s book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium when it was first published in 1543. The book nobody read : chasing the revolutions of Nicholas Copernicus by Owen Gingerich, published in 2004, is the story of Gingerich’s quest to prove Koestler wrong by locating all remaining copies of the first and second editions of Copernicus’s book, which Gingerich published as An annotated census of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus, a 400 page reference work. In this survey the provenance, annotations, marginal notes and condition of all known surviving copies were detailed. In order to do this Gingerich travelled the world to see every copy he could of the first and second editions of De revolutionibus. ©University of Reading 2007 Page 1 Title page of the copy of the second edition of De Revolutionibus by Copernicus in University of Reading Library. We now know that the history of the making and publishing of De revolutionibus in 1543 is a story of Papal intrigue, drama, politics and a deathbed scene. Nicolaus Copernicus was a Polish astronomer (1473-1543). Born in Torun, he began his university studies in Krakow in 1491, where he studied canon law and Latin and Greek classics.
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Owen Gingerich the Book Nobody Read
Quicklinks - Select a Link - MC Square | Search Current Events The Book Nobody Read: A Closer Look at the Book that Moved the World Past Events A free lecture sponsored by The Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science and the Center for Public Related Links: Humanities - Select a Link - Featured speaker: Dr. Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory Nicholas Copernicus’ famous book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), stopped the sun and threw the earth into motion, leading to one of the great revolutions in scientific thought. Yet it has been called “the book that nobody read,” because of its very challenging technical content. Owen Gingerich, a leading historian of astronomy, has discovered through meticulous research that this assumption is badly mistaken. A bibliographic detective, Prof. Gingerich tells how he searched worldwide for copies of the book, in order to examine the notes written into copies by its many early readers. Involved are the FBI, the KGB, a hapless Marxist, the English art squad, and the Italian Carabinieri. Also involved are the history of the pretzel, the center of the universe, the Church’s censorship of Copernicus’ words, “the divine handiwork,” and how the Spanish Inquisition allowed books that had been banned by Rome. Friday, 24 February 2012, at 7:00 pm. Location: Boyer Hall 131, Messiah College, Grantham, PA. Directions and a campus map are at http://www.messiah.edu/visitors/direction.html. Owen Gingerich is Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
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