Concept

Astronomer

Overview

scientist who studies celestial bodies

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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Aristotle, Eudoxus, Hipparchus, Ptolemy, and Purbach, therefore, had all degraded them below the Moon, and ranked them among the meteors of the upper regions of the air. The observations of Tycho Brahe demonstrated, that they ascended into the celestial regions, and were often higher than Venus or the Sun. Des Cartes, at random, supposed them to be always higher than even the orbit of Saturn; and seems, by the…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
Names Astronomer several times; opens on Astronomer.
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As has been pointed out, the undertaking of the ancient mathematical astronomer to resolve the motions of planetary bodies into circular, uniform, continuous, symmetrical movements is comparable to the theorem of Fourier which allows the mathematician to replace any one periodic function by a sum of circular functions. In other words, the astronomy of the Alexandrian period is a somewhat cumbrous development of the…
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
Names Astronomer twice; opens on Astronomer.
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Hipparchus, before making his solar and lunar tables, had to discover rules for calculating the relations between the sides and angles of triangles--_trigonometry_, a subdivision of pure mathematics. Further, the reduction of the doctrine of the sphere to the quantitative form needed for astronomical purposes, required the formation of a _spherical trigonometry_, which was also achieved by Hipparchus. Thus both…
Herbert Spencer, Illustrations of Universal Progress
Close in meaning to Astronomer; the term itself is not named.
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Astronomer

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