Astronomers, Astrophysicists, Astronauts, “I...-J...-K...-L...-”
for the social studies and science classrooms, theme decor.

James Irwin
Mae Jemison
Johannes Kepler
Omar Khayyam

Pierre-Simon Laplace
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Joseph Lockyer
Jack Lousma

James B. Irwin
b. 3-17-1930; Pittsburgh, PA
d. 8-8-1991; Colorado (heart attack)

James Irwin was the Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 15 (the fourth human lunar landing) and the eighth person to walk on the Moon.

• flag posters

Mae Jemison
b. 10-17-1956; Decatur, AL

Mae Jemison, the first African American woman in space, served as a STS-47 Endeavour Mission Specialist. Jemison is also a medical doctor, and served in the Peace Corps.

• Find Where The Wind Goes: Moments From My Life

Johannes Kepler
b. 12-27-1571; Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt, near Stuttgart, now Germany
d. 11-15-1630; Regensburg, Electorate of Bavaria

Astronomer, astrologer, mathematician and teacher Johannes Kepler, a key figure in the 17th century scientific revolution, is best remembered for describing the motion of planets around the Sun. His work provided insights to Isaac Newton for the theory of universal gravitation.

Kepler had smallpox as a child and suffered from impaired vision and crippled hands.

FYI ~ Kepler's mother, Katharina, was an herbalist, and who according to Kepler took him to “... a high place to look” at the Great Comet of 1577, was accused of witch craft, and saved from execution by her son.

Johannes Kepler quotes ~
• “Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.”
• “We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.”
• “I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.”
• “Nature uses as little as possible of anything.”
• “I feel carried away and possessed by an unutterable rapture over the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony... I write a book for the present time, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for its readers, as God has also waited six thousand years for an onlooker.”
• “The soul of the newly born baby is marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes into the world, unconsciously remembers it, and remains sensitive to the return of configurations of a similar kind.”
• “Since geometry is co-eternal with the divine mind before the birth of things, God himself served as his own model in creating the world.”
• “Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God.”

• Kepler's Witch : An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order Amid Religious War, Political Intrigue, and the Heresy Trial of His Mother

Omar Khayyam
b. 5-18-1048; Iran
d. 1131

Omar Khayyám was a Persian poet, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer best remembered in the West for his Rubaiyat. Rubaiyat is a word derived from the Arabic root word for “4”, and meaning a ruba'i or two line stanza with two parts per line.

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou ...

• The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Pierre-Simon Laplace
b. 3-23-1749; Beaumont-en-Auge, Normandy, France
d. 3-5-1827; Paris

Astronomer and mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace formulated a great number of equations which appear in many branches of mathematical physics.

Laplace, often referred to as the “Newton of France”, is one of the 72 names engraved on the Eiffel Tower.

Pierre-Simon Laplace quotes ~
• “Life's most important questions are, for the most part, nothing but probability problems.”
• “What we know is not much. What we do not know is immense.” (attributed)
• “Nature laughs at the difficulties of integration.”

Henrietta Swan Leavitt
b. 7-4-1868; Lancaster, MA
d. 12-12-1921; Cambridge, Massachusetts

Henrietta Swan Leavitt, a graduate of Radcliffe College, went to work in 1893 at the Harvard College Observatory as a “computer”, assigned to count images on photographic plates.

Her observations discovered “the period-luminosity relation of Cepheid variables that radically changed the theory of modern astronomy, an accomplishment for which she received almost no recognition during her lifetime”.

Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer
b. 5-17-1836; Rugby, Warwickshire, England
d. 8-16-1920; Salcombe Regis, Devon

Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer was an amateur astonomer who eventually became the Director of the Solar Physics Observatory in Kensington.

Lockyer and French scientist Pierre Janssen are credited with discovering the element gas helium.

FYI ~ he was also the founder and first editor of the journal Nature.

Jack R. Lousma
b. 2-29-1936; Grand Rapids, MI

Jack Lousma logged a total of over 1,619 hours in space as the pilot for Skylab 3 (June - Sept, 1973 with Owen Garriot and Alan Bean) and commander on Space Shuttle STS-3 (March 22–30, 1982).

Lousma also spent 11 hours on two spacewalks outside the Skylab space station.

James Lovell
b. 3-25-1928; Cleveland, OH, raised in Milwaukee, WI

James Lovell was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission (1970) that was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew Jack Swigert and Fred Haise, and mission control, after a critical equipment failure en route to the Moon.

James Lovell quotes ~
• “Houston, we've had a problem here.”
• “Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.”

Percival Lowell
b. 3-13-1855; Boston, MA
d. 11-12-1916; Flagstaff, AZ

Percival Lowell, a member of the Boston Lowell family, was an astronomer as well as an author, mathematician and businessman. He was particularly interested in Mars after reading Flammarion's La planete Mars and seeing the drawings of Giovanni Schiaparelli.

Lowell also drew maps of Venus, and he devoted the last decade of his life to searching for a planet beyond Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh did discover Pluto (now recategoried as a dwarf planet) from the Lowell Observatory in 1930.

FYI ~ Lowell chose Flagstaff in the Arizona Territory as the site of his observatory because of its altitude and distance from city lights (1894).

Percival Lowell quotes ~
• “Are physical forces alone at work there, or has evolution begotten something more complex, something not unakin to what we know on Earth as life?” Mars (1896)
• “In the great desert of northern Arizona the traveller, threading his way across a sage-brush and cacti plain shut in by abrupt-sided shelves of land rising here and there some hundreds of feet higher, suddenly comes upon a petrified forest.” Mars as the Abode of Life (1908)