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Andrea Wulf
Andrea Wulf (born 1972) is a German-British historian and writer who has written books, newspaper articles and book reviews. Biography Wulf was born in New Delhi, India, a child of German developmental aid workers, and spent the first five years of her life there then grew up in Hamburg. She studied first at the University of Lüneburg, and then design history at The Royal College of Art, London. Wulf is a public speaker, delivering lectures in the UK and USA. She was the guest speaker at the Kitt Peak National Observatory. Her book ''The Brother Gardeners'' was long-listed for the Samuel Johnson Prize and received a CBHL Annual Literature Award in 2010. In 2016, she won the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize and the Royal Geographical Society's Ness Award for her book ''The Invention of Nature.'' ''Chasing Venus: the Race to Measure the Heavens'' ''Chasing Venus: the Race to Measure the Heavens'' (2012) is a non-fiction book about expeditions of scienti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
:Template:Infobox Writer/doc
Infobox writer may be used to summarize information about a person who is a writer/author (includes screenwriters). If the writer-specific fields here are not needed, consider using the more general ; other infoboxes there can be found in :People and person infobox templates. This template may also be used as a module (or sub-template) of ; see WikiProject Infoboxes/embed for guidance on such usage. Syntax The infobox may be added by pasting the template as shown below into an article. All fields are optional. Any unused parameter names can be left blank or omitted. Parameters Please remove any parameters from an article's infobox that are unlikely to be used. All parameters are optional. Unless otherwise specified, if a parameter has multiple values, they should be comma-separated using the template: : which produces: : , language= If any of the individual values contain commas already, add to use semi-colons as separators: : which produces: : , ps ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), often shortened to RGS, is a learned society and professional body for geography based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences, the Society has 16,000 members, with its work reaching the public through publications, research groups and lectures. The Society was founded in 1830 under the name ''Geographical Society of London'' as an institution to promote the 'advancement of geographical science'. It later absorbed the older African Association, which had been founded by Sir Joseph Banks in 1788, as well as the Raleigh Club and the Palestine Association. In 1995 it merged with the Institute of British Geographers, a body for academic geographers, to officially become the Royal Geographical Society ''with IBG''. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Society's President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The member ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guillaume Le Gentil
Guillaume Joseph Hyacinthe Jean-Baptiste Le Gentil de la Galaisière (, 12 September 1725 – 22 October 1792) was a French astronomer who discovered several nebulae and was appointed to the Royal Academy of Sciences. He made unsuccessful attempts to observe the 1761 and 1769 transits of Venus from India. Biography Guillaume Le Gentil was born in Coutances and first intended to enter the church before turning to astronomy. He discovered what are now known as the Messier objects M32, M36 and M38, as well as the nebulosity in M8, and he was the first to catalogue the dark nebula sometimes known as Le Gentil 3 (in the constellation Cygnus). He was part of the international collaborative project organized by Mikhail Lomonosov to measure the distance to the Sun, by observing the transit of Venus at different points on the earth. Edmond Halley had suggested the idea, but it required careful measurements from different places on earth, and the project was launched with more ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maximilian Hell
Maximilian Hell ( hu, Hell Miksa) (born Rudolf Maximilian Höll; May 15, 1720 – April 14, 1792) was an astronomer and an ordained Jesuit priest from the Kingdom of Hungary. Biography Born as Rudolf Maximilian Höll in Selmecbánya, Hont County, Kingdom of Hungary (present-day Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia), but later changed his surname to ''Hell''. He was the third son from the second marriage of his father Matthias Cornelius Hell (Matthäus Kornelius Hell) and his mother Julianna Staindl. The couple had a total of 22 children. Registry entries indicate that the family was of German descent, while Maximilian Hell later in life (ca. 1750) is known to declare himself as Hungarian. The place of birth of Maximilian's father is unknown; the settlements Körmöcbánya (today Kremnica), Schlagenwald, (today Horní Slavkov) or Schlackenwerth (today Ostrov nad Ohří) are most frequently given. Born in a mixed German, Hungarian and Slovak town, he presumably knew Slovak to a c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmond Halley
Edmond (or Edmund) Halley (; – ) was an English astronomer, mathematician and physicist. He was the second Astronomer Royal in Britain, succeeding John Flamsteed in 1720. From an observatory he constructed on Saint Helena in 1676–77, Halley catalogued the southern celestial hemisphere and recorded a transit of Mercury across the Sun. He realised that a similar transit of Venus could be used to determine the distances between Earth, Venus, and the Sun. Upon his return to England, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, and with the help of King Charles II, was granted a master's degree from Oxford. Halley encouraged and helped fund the publication of Isaac Newton's influential ''Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (1687). From observations Halley made in September 1682, he used Newton's laws of motion to compute the periodicity of Halley's Comet in his 1705 ''Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets''. It was named after him upon its predicted return in 1758, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher, and political philosopher. Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the leading intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, a drafter and signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the first United States Postmaster General. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his studies of electricity, and for charting and naming the current still known as the Gulf Stream. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among others. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania. Isaacson, 2004, p. Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeremiah Dixon
Jeremiah Dixon FRS (27 July 1733 – 22 January 1779) was an English surveyor and astronomer who is best known for his work with Charles Mason, from 1763 to 1767, in determining what was later called the Mason–Dixon line. Early life and education Dixon was born in Cockfield, near Bishop Auckland, County Durham, in 1733, one of seven children, to George Dixon, a coal mine owner, and Mary Hunter, a native of Newcastle who was said to have been "the cleverest woman" to ever marry into the Dixon family. Dixon became interested in astronomy and mathematics during his education at Barnard Castle. Early in life he made acquaintances with the eminent intellectuals of Southern Durham: mathematician William Emerson, and astronomers John Bird and Thomas Wright. Career It was probably the astronomer John Bird, an active Fellow of the Royal Society, who recommended Dixon as suitable to serve as assistant to Charles Mason in 1761 when the Royal Society sent them to observe the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph-Nicolas Delisle
Joseph-Nicolas Delisle (; 4 April 1688 – 11 September 1768) was a French astronomer and cartographer. Life Joseph was born in Paris, one of the 11 sons of Claude Delisle (1644–1720). Like many of his brothers, among them Guillaume Delisle, he initially followed classical studies. Soon however, he moved to astronomy under the supervision of Joseph Lieutaud and Jacques Cassini. In 1714 he entered the French Academy of Sciences as pupil of Giacomo Filippo Maraldi. In the next year he discovered Arago spot a century before Arago. Though he was a good scientist and member of a wealthy family he did not have much money. In 1712, he set up an observatory at the Luxembourg Palace and after three years moved to the Hotel de Taranne. From 1719 to 1722 he was employed at the Royal observatory, before returning to his observatory at the Luxembourg Palace. In 1724 he met Edmond Halley in London and, among other things, discussed transits of Venus.Wulf, Andrea. ''Chasing Venus: The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Baptiste Chappe D'Auteroche
Jean-Baptiste Chappe d'Auteroche (23 March 1722 – 1 August 1769) was a French astronomer, best known for his observations of the transits of Venus in 1761 and 1769. Early life Little is known of Chappe's early life. He was born into a distinguished family holding administrative posts and coming from Auvergne, a region of central France. He entered the priesthood, probably as a Jesuit, and devoted himself to the study of astronomy. He was appointed assistant astronomer at the Royal Observatory and admitted to the Royal Academy of Sciences on 14 January 1759. Distance from the Earth to the Sun In the mid-18th century, the dynamics of the Solar System were reasonably well understood, but astronomers only had an approximate idea of its scale. If the distance between two planets could be measured, all the other distances would be known from Kepler's laws of planetary motion. The best candidate for an accurate measurement was the distance between the Earth and Venus, which could ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine The Great
, en, Catherine Alexeievna Romanova, link=yes , house = , father = Christian August, Prince of Anhalt-Zerbst , mother = Joanna Elisabeth of Holstein-Gottorp , birth_date = , birth_name = Princess Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst , birth_place = Stettin, Pomerania, Prussia, Holy Roman Empire(now Szczecin, Poland) , death_date = (aged 67) , death_place = Winter Palace, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire , burial_date = , burial_place = Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg , signature = Catherine The Great Signature.svg , religion = Catherine II (born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst; 2 May 172917 November 1796), most commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the reigning empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power following the overthrow of her husband, Peter III. Under her long reign, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment, Russia experienced a renaissance of culture and sciences, which led to the founding o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of president of the Royal Society for over 41 years. He advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world's leading botanical garden. He is credited for bringing 30,000 plant specimens home with him; amongst them, he was the first European to document 1,400. Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and the colonisation of Australia, as well as the establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government on all Australian mat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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