Chaldea

Ah, so this was Fred Hoyle Day at Cambridge. I would have very much liked to have been there. (However, I’m on a different continent with teaching commitments at the moment.)

Although the event has already taken place, there is some interesting information about the history of astronomy holdings of the St. John’s College library on this site.

It’s with sadness that I must post about the recent passing of Professor John David North on October 31st.

Professor North was an eminent historian of astronomy, with interdisciplinary expertise spanning fields as diverse as the history of science and English literature. This year saw the release of a revised edition of his book entitled ‘Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology’, published by the University of Chicago Press. His passing is a great loss, and he will be missed.

This article, in the Vancouver Sun, is the first of a series on the topic of science and religion. Of particular interest is the reference to “the striking similarity between 16th-century Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus’s arguments for the Earth’s rotation and those of 13th-century Muslim polymath Nasir al-Din al-Tusi”, noted by science historian and Islamicist Dr. F. Jamil Ragep of McGill University.