Table of Contents

Airglow; chemical revolution; computers and meteorology; conservation of natural resources; continental drift and plate tectonics; cosmic rays; early history; dendrochronology; dowsing; earth in decay; economic geology; expanding earth theories; Focault's order of things; geological astronomy; geophysics in Australia; ice ages; masons and the earth; novel facts; petroleum in America; radioactivity in the earth; sacred theory of the earth; scopes trial.

About the Author

Gregory A. Good is Associate Professor in the History Department at West Virginia University.

Reviews

Easy-to-understand essays by experts in thefield
Tracing the history of the oldest science from the ancient world to the space age, this encyclopedia begins with a brilliant synopsis of the development of astronomy from preliterate cultures to the present and ends with the biography of the pioneer astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky. Requiring no advanced knowledge of mathematics or physics it brings together current scholarly thinking and the state of the art of astronomy in over 300 carefully researched and easy-to-grasp essays-each written and signed by an expert.

Covers key fields, individuals, andinstitutions
Major entries explore the historical development of the major fields of astronomy: astrophysics, celestial mechanics, solar system astronomy, and the study of variable stars, comets, double stars, and nebulae. Experts discuss the growth of astronomy in nations and regions: United States, Latin America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand. There are biographies of important individuals and histories of landmark institutions.

The work of top instrumentexperts
Illustrated entries by leading experts on the development of astronomical instrumentation range from the astrolabe to the Hubble Space Telescope. Historians of science discuss important topics in the social history of astronomy, such as the history of amateurs, literature and astronomy, women in astronomy, astronomy and the Roman Catholic Church, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence.

Specialfeatures:
Covers astronomy from early cultures to the present * Includes more than 300 authoritative essays * Contains biographies of important individuals and histories of landmark institutions * Explores the historical development of the major fields of astronomy * International entries chart astronomy in Latin America, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States * Main Selection of the Astronomy Book Club

Entriescover five categories:
Historical overviews (calendars, telescopes) * Observatories (Royal Greenwich Observatory, Paris Observatory) * Regional contexts (England, France, China) * Social history (women in astronomy, Copernican Revolution) * Biographies (Euler, Lindblad, Newton )