Pioneers of Science

With portraits and other illustrations. A collection of 28 lectures on the history and progress of astronomy. Some selections of these lectures are entitled: Copernicus and the motion of the Earth; Tycho Brahe and the earliest observatory; Kepler and the laws of planetary motion; Galileo and the invention of the telescope; Sir Isaac Newton; Roemer and Bradley and the velocity of light; Herschel and the motion of the fixed stars; Bessel, the distances of the stars and the discovery of the stellar planets; discovery of Neptune; tides and planetary evolution.