Author Description

The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy traces the history of astronomy as a science, describing in detail the various discoveries that have led to our current beliefs about space and the universe. It shows how speculations based on sky-gazing have formed part of the essential mythology of societies from the earliest times; reveals astronomy to be an exacting and serious science evolving in tandem with geometry and mathematics; and describes the contributions made by great thinkers such as Pythagoras, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.