How a Jesuit Astronomer and His Student beat Isaac Newton to a Key Idea by more than 50 Years (re-run)
This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran on May 25, 2019. I am rerunning it because the Journal for the History of Astronomy, which in February 2019 published the research that this post is based on, has made the published research available, free of charge. So CLICK HERE and then download a PDF of the original paper. You will see that it is pretty similar to this post. In 1614, well before Isaac Newton was even born, a German Jesuit astronomer named Christoph Scheiner and his student, Johann Georg Locher, developed an explanation for how the Earth could orbit the sun. Earth, they said, was like a massive ball, perpetually falling toward the sun. They discussed this in their 1614 book Disquisitiones Mathematicae de Controversiis et Novitatibus Astronomicis, or Mathematical Disquisitions Concerning Astronomical Controversies and Novelties (recently translated by yours truly, and published by the University of Notre Dame Press—click here). This was Locher’s thesis for his degree … Continue reading →