Emily Winterburn | |
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Alma mater | University of Manchester Imperial College London |
Notable works | The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel (2017) The Stargazer's Guide The Astronomers Royal |
Emily Winterburn is a British science writer, physicist and historian of science based in Yorkshire. She is a visiting Fellow at the University of Leeds. Among other books, she wrote The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel, published by The History Press in 2017.
Winterburn studied physics at the University of Manchester. She remained there to complete a Masters in the History of Science, focussing on Ernest Rutherford and the Manchester physics department between 1907 and 1919. [1]
Winterburn joined the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, as a curator looking after astrophysical objects collected from 1250 to the present day. [1] Whilst at the Royal Observatory, Winterburn published The Astronomers Royal. [2] She appeared on Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time in 2007, discussing optics. [3] Alongside curating, Winterburn began a PhD at Imperial College London, studying the Herschel family. [1] In 2011 she submitted her PhD thesis, The Herschels: a scientific family in training. [4] Her thesis was well received by the historical science communities. [5]
In 2009 Winterburn joined the University of Leeds Museum of Science as a curator. [6] [1] That year she published The Stargazer's Guide: How to Read Our Night Sky with HarperCollins. [7] Winterburn is an expert on the Herschel family and Islamic astronomical instruments. [1] She won the 2014 Notes & Records of the Royal Society essay prize for her essay Philomaths, Herschel, and the myth of the self-taught man. [8] She was part of the 2015 Royal Society celebration for International Women's Day, where she discussed girls' participation in scientific education and society. [9] [10] She contributed to the Springer Publishing book The Scientific Legacy of William Herschel. [11] Winterburn has also written for popular periodicals, including Astronomy Now magazine.
Having published extensively on the Herschel family, Winterburn began to write The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel in 2012. [12] [13] The Quiet Revolution of Caroline Herschel focuses on the ten most productive years of Caroline Herschel's academic career, working with her brother William Herschel's telescope and finding comets. [14] The book was published in 2017 and has been described as a "terrific read". [15] [16]
Frederick William Herschel was a German-born British astronomer and composer. He frequently collaborated with his younger sister and fellow astronomer Caroline Herschel. Born in the Electorate of Hanover, William Herschel followed his father into the military band of Hanover, before emigrating to Great Britain in 1757 at the age of nineteen.
John Flamsteed was an English astronomer and the first Astronomer Royal. His main achievements were the preparation of a 3,000-star catalogue, Catalogus Britannicus, and a star atlas called Atlas Coelestis, both published posthumously. He also made the first recorded observations of Uranus, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a star, and he laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who invented the blueprint and did botanical work.
The Royal Observatory, Greenwich is an observatory situated on a hill in Greenwich Park in south east London, overlooking the River Thames to the north. It played a major role in the history of astronomy and navigation, and because the Prime Meridian passes through it, it gave its name to Greenwich Mean Time, the precursor to today's Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The ROG has the IAU observatory code of 000, the first in the list. ROG, the National Maritime Museum, the Queen's House and the clipper ship Cutty Sark are collectively designated Royal Museums Greenwich.
Sir George Biddell Airy was an English mathematician and astronomer, and the seventh Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. His many achievements include work on planetary orbits, measuring the mean density of the Earth, a method of solution of two-dimensional problems in solid mechanics and, in his role as Astronomer Royal, establishing Greenwich as the location of the prime meridian.
Caroline Lucretia Herschel was a German-born British astronomer, whose most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets, including the periodic comet 35P/Herschel–Rigollet, which bears her name. She was the younger sister of astronomer William Herschel, with whom she worked throughout her career.
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its headquarters are in Burlington House, on Piccadilly in London. The society has over 4,000 members ("Fellows"), most of them professional researchers or postgraduate students. Around a quarter of Fellows live outside the UK.
Vera Florence Cooper Rubin was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. She uncovered the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies by studying galactic rotation curves. Identifying the galaxy rotation problem, her work provided evidence for the existence of dark matter. These results were confirmed over subsequent decades.
The Reverend Robert Main was an English astronomer.
The Isaac Newton Telescope or INT is a 2.54 m (100 in) optical telescope run by the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma in the Canary Islands since 1984.
Elisabeth Catherina Koopmann-Hevelius is considered one of the first female astronomers. Originally from Danzig, Poland, she contributed to improve the work and observations done together with her husband Johannes Hevelius.
Frederick Garnett "Fred" Watson AM is an English-born astronomer and popular scientist in Australia. He holds the role of Australia's First Astronomer at Large with the Commonwealth Government of Australia, relaying the important aspects of Australian astronomy to the government, the general public, and associated organisations.
Marek Janusz Kukula is a British astronomer and an author of works on popular science. After gaining a PhD in radio astronomy from the University of Manchester in 1994, he specialised in studying distant galaxies. As his research reached the limits of telescopes, he moved into the field of public engagement. In 2008 he was appointed Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.
The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science is a 2008 popular biography book about the history of science written by Richard Holmes. In it, the author describes the scientific discoveries of the polymaths of the late eighteenth century and how this period formed the basis for modern scientific discoveries. Holmes, a literary biographer, also looks at the influence of science on the arts in the Romantic era. The book won the 2009 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, the 2009 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction, and the 2010 National Academies Communication Award.
The Society for the History of Astronomy is an organisation based in the United Kingdom that promotes research into the history of astronomy. It publishes a research journal called The Antiquarian Astronomer and a regular Bulletin.
James Archibald Hamilton (1748–1815) FRIA, Irish cleric and astronomer, was born in the area of Athlone, Co. Westmeath, Ireland.
Astronomy Photographer of the Year is an annual astronomy photography competition and exhibition that is organised by the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.
Emily Levesque is an American astronomer and assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. She is renowned for her work on massive stars and using these stars to investigate galaxy formation. In 2014, she received the Annie Jump Cannon Award for her innovative work on gamma ray bursts and the Sloan Fellowship in 2017. In 2015, Levesque, Rachel Bezanson, and Grant R. Tremblay published an influential paper, which critiqued the use of the Physics GRE as an admissions cutoff criterion for astronomy postgraduate programs by showing there was no statistical correlation between applicant's score and later success in their academic careers. Subsequently, the American Astronomical Society adopted the stance that the Physics GRE should not be mandatory for graduate school applications, and many graduate astronomy programs have since removed the Physics GRE as a required part of their graduate school applications. She is also the author of the 2020 popular science book The Last Stargazers: The Enduring Story of Astronomy's Vanishing Explorers.
Florence Taylor Hildred (1865–1932) was the first female member of Leeds Astronomical Society and later a pastor for the Unity Society of Practical Christianity in Sacramento, US, where she was the first woman in the city to conduct a marriage ceremony.