A Public Lecture by Dr Simon Mitton (University of Cambridge).
For more than three millennia watchers of the skies have used geometry as a means of understanding the mechanism of the heavens. In Egypt and Mesopotamia classical surveying techniques were essential for the stellar alignments of the largest structures in the ancient world. Geometry allowed the ancients to measure the size of the Earth, and to attempt to measure the relative distances of the Sun and Moon. In his great book the Almagest, Claudius Ptolemy (second century AD) describes a geometrical model of the solar system that served as the standard work for 1300 years. In the thirteenth century Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln wrote De Luce, the first attempt at describing the origin of the universe in geometrical language. Copernicus, Galileo and Newton all employed geometry as the essential tool for doing cosmology. In 1915 Einstein published the general theory of relativity, a classical theory of gravity using four dimensional geometry, and this continues to be the preferred mathematical tool for modelling the universe. This is a non-technical lecture with an emphasis on the remarkable astronomers who used geometry to advance our understanding of the universe
After the lecture Simon Mitton will be signing copies of his popular book on the origin of structure in the universe: Heart of Darkness, unravelling the mysteries of the invisible universe, co-authored with Jeremiah P. Ostriker (Princeton University), published by Princeton University Press, 2013.
Dr Simon Mitton trained as a radio astronomer at Cambridge. After his PhD was awarded he spent five years at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, after which he had a long career as a science publishing director at Cambridge University Press. Following his retirement from the Press he started a new career as a historian of science. His research speciality is the history of astronomy and cosmology in the twentieth century, on which he has published a number of academic and popular books. He is a Vice President (2012 - 2014) of the RAS, and is a RAS Guest Lecturer for Cunard on RMS Queen Mary 2.