Picture of Giovanni Cassini
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Giovanni Cassini

Giovanni Cassini was Italian-French astronomer who lived between 1625-1712. He discovered that Saturn's Rings are split into two parts, and today the gap between them is called the "Cassini Division". He also discovered four of Saturn's moons, in addition to those found by Huygens twenty years earlier.

Cassini studied hydrology and how to avoid the damaging floods that plagued Europe. His greatest mistakes were rejecting the Copernican model of the solar system and Newton's theory of universal gravitation.

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The Earth Scientist, Volume XXV, Issue 3, Fall 2009

The Fall 2009 issue of The Earth Scientist includes a collection of Earth and Space Science articles for you, covering the current efforts to save Louisiana’s Lake Pontchartrain, student research into building design as it relates to earthquake damage, an exciting Earth Science project and resource from the United Kingdom...more

Christian Huygens

Christian Huygens was a Dutch physicist and astronomer who lived between 1629-1695. He found new methods for grinding and polishing lenses, making telescopes more powerful. Using a telescope he had made,...more

Nicholas Copernicus

Nicholas Copernicus was a Polish astronomer who lived between 1473-1543. Before his time, people believed in the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, which maintained that the Earth was the center of...more

Isaac Newton

Isaac Newton was an English scientist and mathematician who lived between 1642-1727. He had one of the most brilliant minds the world has ever known. Legend has it that seeing an apple fall gave Newton...more

Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin was an English Naturalist who lived between 1809-1882. He laid the foundations for the modern science of biology, and changed how other scientists understood the appearance of life on Earth....more

Christian Doppler

Christian Doppler was an Austrian mathematician who lived between 1803-1853. He is known for the principle he first proposed in Concerning the coloured light of double stars in 1842. This principle is...more

Ben Franklin

Ben Franklin was an American scientist and statesman who lived between 1706-1790. At a time when little was known about electricity, he carried out many experiments to learn of its dangers and possible...more

Edmond Halley

Edmond Halley was an English astronomer who lived between 1656-1742. Using historical records, his own observations, and Newton's universal law of gravitation, he reasoned that the comets which had appeared...more

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