Noel Swerdlow

Noel M. Swerdlow ( born September 9, 1941 in Los Angeles ) is an American historian of astronomy.

Swerdlow received his doctorate in 1968 from Yale University with Asger Aaboe ( Ptolemys Theory of the Distances and Sizes of the Planets: A Study of The Scientific Foundations of Medieval Cosmology ). He was professor of astronomy and the history of astronomy at the University of Chicago, where he is Professor Emeritus today. 1973/4 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study.

Swerdlow mainly dealt with Renaissance astronomy as that of Nicholas Copernicus ( via its astronomy he wrote a book with Otto Neugebauer ), Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Regiomontanus, as well as with ancient astronomy. He wrote a book on Babylonian planetary theories. His dissertation dealt with the reconstruction of the method of determining the distance of the sun and moon of Hipparchus, as was handed down by Ptolemy, and he also wrote about the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus. He is writing a book about the astronomy of the Renaissance ( 2008).

In 1988 he was MacArthur Fellow.

Writings

  • Otto Neugebauer: Mathematical Astronomy in Copernicus De Revolutionibus, Springer 1984, 2 volumes
  • Babylonian theory of the planets, Princeton University Press 1998
  • The Recovery of the Exact Sciences of Antiquity: Mathematics, Astronomy, Geography, in A. Grafton (Editor) "Rome Reborn. The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture ", The Library of Congress / Yale University Press, 1993, p.125 - 167th
  • Astronomy of the Renaissance, in C. Walker (Editor) "Astronomy before the telescope ", The British Museum Press, 1996, p.187 -229
  • Publisher: Ancient Astronomy and celestial divination, MIT Press 1999 ( Dibner Institute Studies in the history of Science and Technology )
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