Astronomy & space · Curated list
Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, Stephen Hawking and 37 more, ranked by how much of the world has written about each one.
Most written-about first. Each description summarises the astronomer's Wikipedia article, which its name links to.
1
Italian physicist and astronomer (1564–1642)
An Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer and polymath whose full name was Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei, usually shortened to Galileo Galilei or simply Galileo. He was born in Pisa, which then belonged to the Duchy of Florence.
Wikidata · Photo: Justus Sustermans, Public domain
2
Mathematician and astronomer (1473–1543)
A Renaissance polymath who proposed a model of the universe with the Sun, not the Earth, at its centre. He published it in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium shortly before he died in 1543; the book was a landmark in the history of science, setting off the Copernican Revolution and helping to open the Scientific Revolution.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
3
English theoretical physicist (1942–2018)
Stephen William Hawking, an English author, cosmologist and theoretical astrophysicist, who directed research at the University of Cambridge's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology. From 1979 to 2009 he held Cambridge's Lucasian Professorship of Mathematics, widely seen as one of the world's most prestigious academic posts.
4
German astronomer and mathematician (1571–1630)
A German polymath: astronomer, astrologer, mathematician, music theorist and natural philosopher. A leading figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, he is remembered chiefly for the laws of planetary motion that bear his name, and for three books: Harmonice Mundi, Astronomia nova and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae.
Wikidata · Photo: Hans von Aachen, Public domain
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5
Islamic mathematician (c. 780 – c. 850)
Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age who wrote works in Arabic on mathematics, astronomy and geography. Around 820 he was working at the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, then the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate.
6
American scientist and science communicator (1934–1996)
Carl Edward Sagan, an American planetary scientist, astronomer and science communicator. He started as an assistant professor at Harvard and later went to Cornell, where he directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies and held the David Duncan Professorship of Astronomy and Space Sciences.
7
Greco-Roman astronomer and geographer (c. 100–170)
Claudius Ptolemy, usually called just Ptolemy, a Greco-Roman writer of some twelve scientific treatises. Three of them went on to matter greatly to science in Western Europe, Byzantium and the Islamic world, first among them the astronomical treatise now called the Almagest, whose original title was Mathēmatikḗ Syntaxis.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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8
French polymath (1749–1827)
Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, a French polymath whose work was key to physics, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, statistics and philosophy. His five-volume Mécanique céleste (1799–1825) summed up and extended the work of those before him.
Wikidata · Photo: Jean-Baptiste Paulin Guérin, Public domain
9
Indian mathematician and astronomer (598–668)
An Indian mathematician and astronomer credited as the first to understand zero as a number standing for nothing and to set out the concept formally. He wrote two early books on astronomy and mathematics: the theoretical Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta and the more practical Khandakhadyaka.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Danish astronomer (1546–1601)
A Danish astronomer, usually known just as Tycho, whose thorough observations, more accurate than any before, helped make astronomy the first modern science and set off the Scientific Revolution. In his lifetime he was known as an alchemist and an astrologer as well as an astronomer.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
11
Dutch mathematician and physicist (1629–1695)
Christiaan Huygens, Lord of Zeelhem, a Dutch inventor, astronomer, engineer, physicist and mathematician seen as a key figure of the Scientific Revolution. He made seminal contributions to optics and mechanics, and as an astronomer he studied Saturn's rings and discovered Titan, its largest moon.
Wikidata · Photo: Bernard Vaillant, Public domain
12
German-British astronomer and composer (1738–1822)
Frederick William Herschel, a German–British composer and astronomer. He often worked together with his younger sister, the astronomer Caroline Herschel.
Wikidata · Photo: Lemuel Francis Abbott, Public domain
13
Greek librarian, mathematician, geographer, and poet
Eratosthenes of Cyrene, an Ancient Greek polymath who was a mathematician, geographer, astronomer, poet, music theorist, scholar and philosopher. In time he became chief librarian of the Library of Alexandria.
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14
American astronomer (1889–1953)
Edwin Powell Hubble, an American astronomer who was crucial in founding the fields of observational cosmology and extragalactic astronomy.
Wikidata · Photo: Johan Hagemeyer, Public domain
15
Arab physicist, mathematician and astronomer (c.965–c.1040)
Known in Latin as Alhazen, a physicist, astronomer and mathematician of the Islamic Golden Age, from Iraq. Called "the father of modern optics", he contributed significantly to the principles of optics, and of visual perception above all.
Wikidata · Photo: Michel Bakni, CC BY-SA 4.0
16
Italian-French scientist (1736–1813)
A mathematician, physicist and astronomer, Italian by birth and French by naturalisation, also recorded as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange or Lagrangia. He made major contributions to analysis, to number theory, and to classical and celestial mechanics.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
17
Swedish scientist (1859–1927)
Svante August Arrhenius, a Swedish scientist. A physicist by training, though often called a chemist, he was one of those who founded physical chemistry as a science.
Wikidata · Photo: Photogravure Meisenbach Riffarth & Co. Leipzig., Public domain
18
Indian mathematician-astronomer (476–550)
Also called Aryabhata I, the first of the great mathematician-astronomers of the classical age of Indian mathematics and astronomy, and an early physicist. Among his works are the Arya-siddhanta and the Āryabhaṭīya.
19
English astronomer, mathematician and physicist (1656–1742)
An English physicist, mathematician and astronomer. In 1720 he followed John Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal, the second in Britain to hold the post.
Wikidata · Photo: Richard Phillips, Public domain
20
Swedish astronomer and physicist (1701–1744)
A Swedish mathematician, physicist and astronomer. He held Uppsala University's chair of astronomy from 1730 to 1744, and spent 1732 to 1735 travelling to notable observatories in France, Italy and Germany.
Wikidata · Photo: Olof Arenius, Public domain
21
Indian-American astrophysicist (1910–1995)
An Indian-American astrophysicist, joint winner of the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics "for his theoretical studies of the physical processes of importance to the structure and evolution of the stars."
Wikidata · Photo: AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Gift of Kameshwar Wali, Attribution
22
English polymath (1792–1871)
Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 1st Baronet, an English polymath: astronomer, mathematician, chemist, inventor and experimental photographer. He invented the blueprint and also worked in botany.
Wikidata · Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron, Public domain
23
Scottish mathematician (1550–1617)
John Napier of Merchiston, nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, a Scottish landowner, the 8th Laird of Merchiston, known as an astronomer, physicist and mathematician.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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24
Greek astronomer, geographer and mathematician (c. 190 – c. 120 BCE)
A Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer, regarded as the founder of trigonometry but best known for a discovery he made incidentally: the precession of the equinoxes.
Wikidata · Photo: William Henry Smyth, Public domain
25
Irish mathematician and physicist (1805–1865)
Sir William Rowan Hamilton, an Irish astronomer, physicist and mathematician who made many major contributions to optics, classical mechanics and algebra. His theoretical work and equations, above all his reformulation of Lagrangian mechanics, are regarded as fundamental to modern theoretical physics.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
26
Belgian scientist and Catholic priest (1894–1966)
Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest, mathematician and theoretical physicist who contributed greatly to astrophysics and cosmology. He was the first to argue that receding galaxies show the universe is expanding, and the first to link the observed Hubble–Lemaître law to the solution of Einstein's field equations of general relativity for a universe that is homogenous and isotropic.
Wikidata · Photo: unknown photographer, probably a CalTech employee. Cropped by Artistosteles, Public domain
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27
American astronomer (born 1936)
An American astronomer. The 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics went jointly to him and Arno Penzias "for their discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation".
Wikidata · Photo: Victor R. Ruiz from Arinaga, Canary Islands, Spain, CC BY 2.0
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28
Danish astronomer (1644–1710)
Ole Christensen Rømer, a Danish astronomer who in 1676 was the first to show that light moves at a finite speed. He also invented the modern thermometer, which shows temperature between two fixed points, those at which water freezes and boils.
Wikidata · Photo: Jacob Coning, Public domain
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29
American astrophysicist (born 1958)
An American science communicator, author and astrophysicist. He studied at Columbia University, at the University of Texas at Austin and at Harvard University.
Wikidata · Photo: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, CC BY-SA 2.0
30
Italian-American astrophysicist (1931–2018)
An Italian-American astrophysicist and Nobel Prize winner who laid the groundwork for X-ray astronomy. He taught at Johns Hopkins University as a professor.
31
Timurid sultan, astronomer and mathematician (1394–1449)
Mīrzā Muhammad Tarāghāy bin Shāhrukh, known better as Ulugh Beg: a sultan of the Timurid dynasty who was also a mathematician and astronomer.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown artist, Public domain
32
Ancient Greek geometer and astronomer (c. 240–190 BC)
An ancient Greek astronomer and geometer known for his work on conic sections. Starting from what Archimedes and Euclid had done on the subject, he brought it to the state it was in before analytic geometry was invented.
Wikidata · Photo: Giovanni Battista Memo, Public domain
33
British astrophysicist (1882–1944)
Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, an English mathematician and astrophysicist. The Eddington limit is named after him: the natural ceiling on how luminous a star can be, or on the radiation that accretion onto a compact object can produce.
Wikidata · Photo: George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C., Public domain
34
18th- and 19th-century French astronomer
A French astronomer who published a catalogue of 110 star clusters and nebulae, now called the Messier objects and referred to by the letter M with a number from 1 to 110.
Wikidata · Photo: Ansiaux (1729—1786) (??), Public domain
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35
English radio astronomer (1918–1984)
Sir Martin Ryle, an English radio astronomer who built revolutionary radio telescope systems and used them to locate and image faint radio sources accurately. In 1946 he and Derek Vonberg became the first to publish interferometric measurements in astronomy at radio wavelengths.
Wikidata · Photo: Rights NRAO/AUI/NSF Photographer Woodruff T. Sullivan III Photo Credit NRAO/AUI Archives, Sullivan Collection, CC BY 4.0
36
Mathematician and astronomer (1625–1712)
An Italian-French astronomer, mathematician, engineer and astrologer. He was born in Perinaldo, near Imperia, then in the County of Nice, which belonged to the Savoyard state.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
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37
Greek astronomer and mathematician (c. 310 – 230 BC)
An ancient Greek mathematician and astronomer, author of the first known heliocentric model: the Sun at the centre of the universe, with the Earth going round it once a year and turning on its axis once a day. He also backed Anaxagoras's view that the Sun was simply another star.
Wikidata · Photo: Unknown artist (17th century), Public domain
38
Italian Catholic priest, mathematician and astronomer (1746–1826)
An Italian astronomer, mathematician and Catholic priest of the Theatine order. The observatory he founded at Palermo now bears the name Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo – Giuseppe S. Vaiana.
Wikidata · Photo: Costanzo Angelini, Public domain
39
American astrophysicist (1945–2025)
George Fitzgerald Smoot III, an American cosmologist and astrophysicist. The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2006 went jointly to him and John C. Mather "for their discovery of the black body form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation".
Wikidata · Photo: Nomo michael hoefner http://www.zwo5.de, CC BY 3.0
40
French physicist and astronomer (1786–1853)
Dominique François Jean Arago, usually just François Arago, a French politician, astronomer, physicist and mathematician, a freemason and a supporter of the Carbonari revolutionaries.
Wikidata · Photo: Ary Scheffer, Public domain
Every Wikidata item that is a person whose occupation is astronomer, and whose one-line description on Wikidata calls them an astronomer, astrophysicist or cosmologist — so that polymaths remembered for something else are left to their own lists, and that has its own English Wikipedia article, ranked by the number of Wikimedia sites with a page about it — Wikipedia's language editions, mostly, and sister projects such as Wikiquote. That counts how many communities independently thought it worth describing, and nobody can buy a place on it. The top 40 are shown.
Wikidata files these under this list's query, but they are not what the list is about:
These belong on the list but Wikidata does not file them where the query looks:
Fetched from Wikidata on 2026-09-25. Each description is this site's summary of the entry's Wikipedia article, which its name links to: the wording is ours, the facts are Wikipedia's, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. To correct an entry, correct it there; the next refresh carries the change.
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