Dennis Rawlins (1937 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. –) is an American astronomer, historian, and publisher, known ^[1] for his intellect and acerbic wit. He has investigated several scientific causes célèbres, and made proposals / recommendations that seemed far-fetched originally, but have become scientific orthodoxy in the course of time. Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Baltimore redirects here. ... Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from... Year 1937 (MCMXXXVII) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Baltimore redirects here. ... Motto: (Out Of Many, One) (traditional) In God We Trust (1956 to date) Anthem: The Star-Spangled Banner Capital Washington D.C. Largest city New York City None at federal level (English de facto) Government Federal constitutional republic  - President George Walker Bush (R)  - Vice President Dick Cheney (R) Independence from...

Scientific issues investigated

Polar Controversies

While studying historical magnetic declination data in polar regions, Rawlins was surprised to find ^[2] that there were no such data from the 1909 expedition of Robert E. Peary, eventually leading him to become skeptical of Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole. In 1973, Rawlins wrote Peary at the North Pole: Fact or Fiction? (Washington: Luce) which was the first scientific examination of the issue that concluded that neither Peary nor his rival Frederick A. Cook had reached the Pole. The book also revealed evidence ^[3] that Peary's 1907 claim to have discovered non-existent "Crocker Land" in 1906 was a fabrication. In 1989 Rawlins found that Peary had suppressed ^[4] his 1909 diary's only explanation of steering poleward, when he read the diary to Congress in 1911. Robert Edwin Peary (May 6, 1856 - February 20, 1920) was an American explorer who is usually credited as the first person, on April 6, 1909, to reach the Geographic North Pole. ... Frederick Cook in arctic gear Frederick Cook on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago A photo from Cooks 1909 arctic expedition, which he alleged was taken at or near the North Pole Frederick Cooks final resting place Frederick Albert Cook (June 10, 1865 – August 5, 1940) was an American...

In 1996, after examining the newly-discovered diary of Richard E. Byrd -- which contained at critical points erased but still legible altitudes observed by sextant -- Rawlins found that that these placed ^[5] Byrd roughly 100 miles south of where his official report put him at the corresponding times. Rawlins thus concluded that despite navigating successfully for most ^[6] of the necessary distance, Byrd's effort had also fallen short, and that therefore the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, 4th claimant to the North Pole, was 1st to genuinely reach it, on May 12, 1926. Given that Amundsen is undisputed 1st attainer of the South Pole, Rawlins announced ^[7] that Amundsen was thus 1st to EACH geographical pole of the earth. When in 1973 Rawlins had published this opinion in his Peary book's final chapter, it had appeared extreme; however, that Amundsen has the 1st verifiable claim to each pole is now the majority opinion among polar experts^{[8] [9] [10]}. Rawlins's detailed report on Byrd's trip and on the competence of lingering defenses of it was co-published in 2000 by the University of Cambridge^[11] and DIO^[12], adding the new finding ^[13] that Byrd's long-suppressed original June 1926 report to the Secretary of the Navy and the National Geographic Society contained alleged raw sextant readings entirely given to 1" precision, which was not possible on Byrd's standard portable sextant and contradicts his 1926 diary, where all sextant observations are expressed to half or quarter arc-minute accuracy ^[14]. Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd, USN (October 25, 1888 – March 11, 1957) was a pioneering American polar explorer and famous aviator. ... In astronomy and surveying, altitude (sometimes called elevation) is one of the two coordinates of the horizontal coordinate system, and refers to the vertical angle from the horizon. ... A sextant is a measuring instrument generally used to measure the angle of elevation of a celestial object above the horizon. ... Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (July 16, 1872 – c. ...

The Discovery of Neptune

For decades, starting in 1966, Rawlins was the sole living scholar questioning University of Cambridge mathematician-genius John Couch Adams's claim to co-discovery of the planet Neptune. (This widely-known priority is obscured in "The Case of the Pilfered Planet", a December 2004 Scientific American adoption of Rawlins's long-standing contention ^[15] that Britain's claim on Neptune was an invalid planet adoption. The web version ^[16] of the Scientific American article shows but a single alteration of the original 2004 published text, suppression of the bibliographical reference on page 99 to the 1999 DIO^[17] article that preceded by five years the planet-theft claim on the cover of Scientific American in 2004.) John Couch Adams (June 5, 1819 – January 21, 1892), was a British mathematician and astronomer. ...

Rawlins's reasoning was that since Adams had published none of his predictions before the planet was discovered, Urbain Leverrier of the Paris Observatory (who published predicted longitudes on June 1 and August 31, 1846) deserves sole credit for the discovery of Neptune, which occurred at the Berlin Observatory on September 23rd, 1846 entirely due to Leverrier's instructions. Neptune was 1st recognized on that evening, merely 1° distant from Leverrier's computed spot. Urbain Le Verrier. ...

In a series of papers published from 1969 through 1999, Rawlins lodged numerous new findings and contentions relative to the history of the discovery of Neptune, among them:

1. Adams was part of a clique of Cambridge astronomers who kept private from other astronomers the enticing secret that Adams's and Leverrier's mathematics were pointing to the same sector of the sky, even while this clique was itself finely searching that region on the quiet, using England's largest refracting telescope^{[18] [19]}.
2. Though standard histories uniformly repeated throughout the 20th century the legend that Adams's unpublished solutions had hit Neptune virtually on the nose, the ultimate solution (called "Hypothesis X" in Rawlins's publications) provided by Adams to the Cambridge search was actually far ^[20] from Neptune ^[21]; Adams's miss was about 12°^[22].
3. Though Adams in the middle of June, 1846 computed an ephemeris for Cambridge Observatory searcher James Challis, which led Challis to unknowingly record Neptune's place on August 4 and 12, 1846 (a common if questionable argument in favor of British priority or co-priority), Rawlins discovered ^[23] that this ephemeris was based upon a circular orbit ^[24]. The 1846 Adams ephemeris's orbit was virtually identical to that published June 1 by Leverrier. This eliminates the case for Adams's priority, which has always rested squarely upon his supposed confidence in his highly elliptical orbit of 1845 ^[25]. Precise comparisons of both orbits' fits to the ephemeris were published in 1999 by DIO^[26].
4. DIO^[27] was first (1994) to publicly name the party (Olin Eggen, a close colleague of the Astronomer Royal) who since the 1960s had hidden the chief British file on the Neptune affair. No other publication outed him until after his October 2, 1998 death, when the file was found among his possessions. Upon DIO's faxed request (backed by E. M. Standish [California Institute of Technology], R. Smith, the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Science, and the Science Department of the New York Times), the National Optical Astronomy Observatory photocopied the file for posterity, sending copies to itself (Tucson archive), Standish, and Rawlins.
5. In 1992^[28], Rawlins had suggested that the twice-disappeared December 8, 1846 letter of Astronomer Royal George Airy contained an attack on Adams (who was discreditably blaming Airy for Britain's disastrous miss). After the Neptune file's reappearance, Nick Kollerstrom (University College London) and Adam Perkins (Royal Greenwich Observatory) verified that theory by recovering the sardonic heart of this history-revising letter ^[29], upon Rawlins's July 7, 1999 request that it be specially examined.
6. Post-discovery discoveries should be viewed with caution^{[30] [31]}.

Rawlins's investigations of the historical background of the Neptune affair led to him to other findings and speculations, e. g., his and Charles Kowal's confirmation ^[32] of William Herschel's claim to the discovery of Uranus's satellite Umbriel, April 17, 1801; empirical sympathy with Heinrich Olbers's destroyed planet theory of the origin of the asteroids, a theory which Rawlins suggests may have had its beginnings in the triple fecundity ^[33] of Olbers's "magic square degree". An ephemeris (plural: ephemerides) (from the Greek word ephemeros = daily) is a device giving the positions of astronomical objects in the sky. ... James Challis (December 12, 1803 – December 3, 1882) was a British clergyman and astronomer. ... Olin Jeuck Eggen (July 9, 1919 – October 2, 1998) was an American astronomer. ... The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an organization that promotes cooperation between scientists, defends scientific freedom, encourages scientific responsibility and supports scientific education for the betterment of all humanity. ... The National Optical Astronomy Observatory consists of four observatories under one management structure: Kitt Peak National Observatory Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory Gemini Observatory National Solar Observatory See also: List of observatories External link http://www. ... George Biddell Airy Sir George Biddell Airy (July 27, 1801 – January 2, 1892) was British Astronomer Royal from 1835 to 1881. ... Royal Observatory, Greenwich The original site of the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO), which was built as a workplace for the Astronomer Royal, was on a hill in Greenwich Park in Greenwich, London, overlooking the River Thames. ... Charles Thomas Kowal (born November 8, 1940) is an American astronomer. ... William Herschel Sir Frederick William Herschel, FRS KH (15 November 1738-25 August 1822) was a German-born British astronomer and composer who became famous for discovering the planet Uranus. ... Atmospheric pressure 0 kPa Umbriel (um-bree-É™l, IPA ) is a moon of Uranus discovered on 1851-10-24 by William Lassell. ... Categories: Astronomers stubs | 1758 births | 1840 deaths | German astronomers | German physicists | Lists of asteroids ...

Scientific Researches

• Starting in 1967 ^[34], Rawlins consistently contended that Pluto is far smaller than one earth-mass, the then generally accepted gravitationally based figure, and that its effects upon Uranus and Neptune must be effectively imperceptible in the observational data of that day^{[35] [36]}.
• At this time, he also recovered a lost 1714 observation of Uranus ^[37], the first addition to the list of pre-discovery planet observations in over a century and the last of Uranus to date.
• In 1970, he extended the E. Brown transformation to discover planetary perturbation's amplitude as a function of distance, graphically and asymptotically ^[38].
• Two papers by Rawlins and Max Hammerton (University of Cambridge) produced upper limits on the gravitationally permissible masses of planets beyond Neptune, showing that exterior planets at probable distances were far from giant, suggesting that the main bodies of the solar system may end at Neptune^[39], which has since been found to be the case.
• Pointing to several resemblances of Pluto with Triton, Rawlins proposed in 1973 ^[40] a mass of Pluto which though too high eventually proved to be closest to the truth among all estimates published by astronomers until the mass of Pluto was accurately ascertained in 1978 through newly discovered Charon's orbit.
• In 1979, Rawlins developed and distributed the first non-series formula for computing atmospheric refraction from zenith to horizon, to one percent relative accuracy^{[41] [42]}. His altered argument method of simplifying computation of refraction is now widely adopted.
• Soon after, he produced a similar compact formula for Rayleigh extinction ^[43].
• Rawlins and Myles Standish (J. P. L., California Inst. of Techn.) showed in successive papers that the 1613 position of Neptune recorded by Galileo probably did not contradict modern theory^[44].
• Rawlins originated and programmed the standard method of analytically determining the dimensions and axes of the solar tidal ellipsoid produced by the combined gravitation of all the planets, speculating that such analysis might also assist in explaining the behavior of some irregular variable multiple stars ^[45].
• Starting in the early 1980s, Rawlins argued that the long history of scholarly disagreements over which eclipse reports from the classical era were valid for gauging secular earth spin behavior was unnecessary, since centuries of untroubled ancient use of the synodic lunar tables surviving in the Almagest showed that they could be employed as an empirical average^[46].
• He also suggested that the accuracy of the Almagest tables of the synodic motion of Mars ^[47] might offer a similar if less sensitive check of modern theory.
• While attempting (1982-1991) to reconstruct Hipparchus's solar and lunar theories, Rawlins showed that the length of the year preserved on the famous Babylonian astronomical cuneiform text BM55555 was based upon well known Greek solstices ^[48] and thereby revealed^[49] the previously long disputed time of day of Hipparchus's dawn June 26, 135 B. C. summer solstice, which permits a rough check upon the modern theory of the sun's motion independent of eclipses^[50]. (BM55555 has since been placed on permanent display at the British Museum.) Likewise for Rawlins's reconstruction of Callippus's dawn June 28, 330 B. C. solstice^[51].
• Rawlins has noted a peculiarity of the solar system which he contends may contribute to solving its origin; the only two twin pairs of planets are contiguous, relatively close to each other, and their inner members are the only planets that rotate in retrograde; the suggestion follows ^[52] that Mercury and Pluto (smallest and most eccentric of the traditional solar system's planets) might be escaped satellites respectively of Venus and Neptune ^[53].
• His further developments of formulas for atmospheric refraction, and for Rayleigh, ozone, and aerosols extinction appeared in the 1990s; later refined by Keith Pickering ^[54].
• While establishing (1987-94) the standard critical edition of Tycho Brahe's catalogue of stars, Rawlins noticed and incorporated the fact that Brahe's data were consistent with virtually zero aerosols on the nights when dim stars were observed^[55], a finding which relates to current debates on environmental degradation trends. This point was made conservatively quantitative by K. Pickering^[56].
• In recent DIO issues (1996, 2001, 2003), Rawlins has used orbital, statistical, and prime number investigations to discover and trace to antiquity eclipse resonances of several types (e. g., returns and precessing saroi-successions), including the finding that lunar eclipses reappear at the same star in exactly 800 sidereal years.
• Most recently, he published systematic mathematical analyses and tabulation of eclipse cycles' durations and stabilities^[57].

Adjectives: Plutonian Atmosphere Surface pressure: 0. ... This article is about the Solar System. ... Triton (trye-tÉ™n, IPA: , Greek Τρίτων), or Neptune I, is the planet Neptunes largest moon. ... Charon (shair-É™n or kair-É™n (key), IPA , Greek Χάρων), discovered in 1978, is, depending on the definition employed, either the largest moon of Pluto or one member of a double dwarf planet with Pluto being the other member. ... Atmospheric refraction is the deviation of light or other electromagnetic wave from a straight line as it passes through the atmosphere due to the variation in air density as a function of altitude. ... Extinction is a term used in astronomy to describe the absorption of light from astronomical objects by matter between them and the observer. ... Galileo can refer to: Galileo Galilei, astronomer, philosopher, and physicist (1564 - 1642) the Galileo spacecraft, a NASA space probe that visited Jupiter and its moons the Galileo positioning system Life of Galileo, a play by Bertolt Brecht Galileo (1975) - screen adaptation of the play Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht... Almagest is the Latin form of the Arabic name (al-kitabu-l-mijisti, i. ... Adjectives: Martian Atmosphere Surface pressure: 0. ... For the Athenian tyrant, see Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus). ... “Summer solstice” redirects here. ... Calippus of Syracuse Callippus (or Calippus) (ca. ... This article is about the planet. ... Adjectives: Plutonian Atmosphere Surface pressure: 0. ... Adjectives: Venusian or (rarely) Cytherean Atmosphere Surface pressure: 9. ... For other uses, see Neptune (disambiguation). ... Keith Pickering (1955 - ) is a scientist and historian. ... Monument of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler in Prague Tycho Brahe, born Tyge Ottesen Brahe (December 14, 1546 – October 24, 1601), was a Danish nobleman from the region of Scania (in modern-day Sweden), best known today as an early astronomer, though in his lifetime he was also well known...

Ancient Astronomy

In 1976, inspired by the pioneering researches of Johns Hopkins physicist Robert Newton, Rawlins began an extensive series of probes of ancient astronomical questions. Among his and his colleagues' findings:

• The Great Pyramid was probably oriented ^[58] c.2600 B.C. by using at winter solstice the star 10i Draconis (previously unnoticed in the ever accumulating pile of mostly dubious Great Pyramid literature, which Rawlins facetiously calls "the Greater Pyramid")^{[59] [60]}.
• The oldest surviving data in continued fraction form indicate ^[61] that c. 280 B.C., heliocentrist astronomer Aristarchus of Samos discovered precession over a century before Hipparchus, deriving the same faulty 1° per century estimate later adopted by the heretofore-accepted discoverer.
• Aristarchus possessed and maybe originated the very accurate so-called Babylonian month ^[62] (29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 3⅓ seconds) decades before the earliest known cuneiform hint of it ^[63].
• This estimate of the month's duration was computationally based on the uniquely stable 4267 month eclipse cycle which generates the supposedly Babylonian equation 251 synodic months = 269 anomalistic months^[64].
• Until the moon is about 3° distant from quarter phase, curvature in its terminator cannot be discerned by the eye ^[65] so Aristarchus's famous 87° elongation for half moon was not a precise angle but a lower bound.
• Previously mis-dated forty years too early, Alexandrian astronomer Aristyllus was fixed by least squares to 260 B.C.^[66], showing that his previously denigrated accuracy was actually among the ancients' best^[67].
• The successive lunar distances of Hipparchus (c. 140 B.C.), 3144 and 3122 1/2, heretofore elaborately investigated without satisfactory fit, can both be exactly solved in two lines of secondary school trigonometry, using Aristarchus's 87° half moon elongation, and are consistent with ancient incorporation of heliocentrist astronomical measure ^{[68] [69]}.
• Recognition of a mean longitude ^[70] of the sun computed by Hipparchus for May 2, 127 B.C., inadvertently preserved by Ptolemy's careless plagiarism^[71].
• Recovery^[72] of two lost Hipparchus orbits of the sun's motion, a crude early one and a refined last one^{[73] [74]}.
• Among indications ^[75] of Hipparchus's early use of spherical trigonometry are his climata ^[76] (hypothesis developed by Aubrey Diller and Rawlins), his tables ^[77] for parallax, and the 1994 solution ^[78] of the long-vexing source of atypical randomness of fractional endings of the southern longitudes in Hipparchus's stellar catalogue.
• There is a hitherto submerged problem ^[79] with Otto Neugebauer's and other panBabylonianists' certainty that Ptolemy mis-attributed the extremely accurate equation 5458 synodic months = 5923 draconitic months to Hipparchus instead of to declining Babylon's astrologers, since the only explicitly dated cuneiform tablet computationally based upon this ratio is from 103 B. C., which is after ^[80] Hipparchus.
• Computation from a large apogee-perigee (half-integer) eclipse interval, a device uniquely associated with Hipparchus, yields exactly the equation previously cited (5458 months = 5923 eclipse months), suggesting both the redemption of his authorship of this discovery and the previously unsuspected possibility of his possession of a no longer extant Babylonian eclipse report from 1245 B. C.
• The planetary data of Pliny are inconsistent with geocentric astronomy but compatible with heliocentric astronomy ^[81].
• Elementary, firm chronological^[82] evidence that Ptolemy's adoption of his orbital parameters was not based upon his purported empirical justification of them.
• Persistent doubts of the -7.5° remainder for the 4267 month eclipse relation (see above) underlying the canonical ancient tables of the moon's mean motion are found ^[83] to be based upon previous investigators' failure to use the appropriate anomalistic year when computationally checking it.
• Ptolemy's remarkably accurate last equation (c.160 A.D.) was intelligently based ^[84] upon the 781 year cycle by which eclipses return to the same star.
• A much more speculative Rawlins suggestion is the possibility that the longest eclipse cycle used by ancient Greek astronomers was of length 16,385 months or about 1,325 years ^[85]
• Generalizing, Rawlins has proposed (2002)^[86] the inclusive theory that all genuine ancient astronomers' mean motions of the moon and planets (as well as the sun's sidereal motion) were based upon the simple, reliable, and attested method of observing and counting integral cycles.
• Rawlins was also long involved in the now concluded controversy over the origin of the Ancient Star Catalogue, discovering strong mechanical ^[87] and statistical ^[88] evidence that Hipparchus was the catalogue's primary observer, as had been obvious to most astronomers^{[89] [90]} since Brahe's 1598 accusation^[91] that Ptolemy had usurped it.

The Great Pyramid of Giza, (sometimes spelled Gizeh) is the oldest and last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the World and the most famous pyramid in the world. ... In mathematics, a continued fraction is an expression such as where a0 is some integer and all the other numbers an are positive integers. ... Heliocentric Solar System Heliocentrism (lower panel) in comparison to the geocentric model (upper panel) In astronomy, heliocentrism is the theory that the sun is at the centre of the Universe and/or the Solar System. ... For other uses of this name, including the grammarian Aristarchus of Samothrace, see Aristarchus Statue of Aristarchus at Aristotle University in Thessalonica, Greece Aristarchus (Greek: Ἀρίσταρχος; 310 BC - ca. ... Precession of a gyroscope Precession refers to a change in the direction of the axis of a rotating object. ... For the Athenian tyrant, see Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus). ... Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy that developed in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, where the ancient kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldea were located. ... Look up Cuneiform in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy that developed in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, where the ancient kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldea were located. ... The orbital period is the time it takes a planet (or another object) to make one full orbit. ... The orbital period is the time it takes a planet (or another object) to make one full orbit. ... This article is about Earths moon. ... World map with terminator (April) A composite image showing the terminator dividing night from day, running across Europe and Africa. ... This diagram shows the elongations (or angle) of the Earths position from the Sun. ... For the crater, see Aristillus (crater). ... For the Athenian tyrant, see Hipparchus (son of Pisistratus). ... For other uses, see Plagiarism (disambiguation). ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Babylonian astronomy refers to the astronomy that developed in Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, where the ancient kingdoms of Sumer, Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldea were located. ... The orbital period is the time it takes a planet (or another object) to make one full orbit. ... The orbital period is the time it takes a planet (or another object) to make one full orbit. ... For other uses, see Babylon (disambiguation). ... Pliny the Elder: an imaginative 19th Century portrait. ... A year (from Old English gēr) is the time between two recurrences of an event related to the orbit of the Earth around the Sun. ...

Ancient Geography

From 1979 to the present, Rawlins has intermittently pursued ancient geographical investigations. Results include:

• Verifying, sharpening, and expanding the data base and fit of Aubrey Diller's important 1934 discovery that Strabo's list of Hipparchus's climata (longest day correlated ^[92] to latitude) are based upon spherical trigonometry in the earliest known period to which this branch of mathematics can be traced ^[93].
• Discovered ^[94] and refined ^[95] a potential common solution to both erroneous ancient earth circumferences, 29000 and 21000 statute miles (the two values used successively ^[96] by Ptolemy and other ancient mathematicians), suggesting that they were respectively based upon horizontal observations of mountaintop dip and multiple sunsets and thus were corrupted^[97] by horizontal light rays' curvature which is 1/6 of the earth's curvature.
• Calculated to 1' precision that Eratosthenes's serious errors for obliquity and for the latitudes of Alexandria and Rhodes could all be explained^[98] as arising from one source, his use of an asymmetric gnomon for his famous altitude of the noon sun at the summer solstice.
• Showed that Strabo's chart of the Nile river is consistent with being the earliest surviving map in spherical coordinates ^{[99] [100]}.
• Restoring a scribal error in which 105 ("cv") feet was misread as 100 vnciae ("c v"), Pliny's "circuli" are solvable^[101] as a Roman linear fit to an ancient climata table for a Mediterranean interval of latitudes (Greenwich centenary symposium, 1984)^[102].
• The list of cities' equinoctial ratios of a gnomon's height to its shadow's length given by Vitruvius is a fit within approximately 1' to a climata table^[103].
• The Giza pyramids, Amarna's Great Aten Temple, Karnak, and Biga Island (legendary sacred tomb of Osiris) lie upon latitudes equal to unit fractions of a circle, respectively 1/12, 1/13, 1/14, and 1/15 which if not a coincidence might imply early Egyptian realization that the earth is round ^{[104] [105]}. Rawlins's only venture into the speculative area of archaeoastronomy.

• In 2006, DIO Editor Dennis Duke published online the completion of centuries of successive scholars' establishment of the text of Ptolemy's "Geographia", Indiana University classicist-philologist Aubrey Diller's edition of the final portion of the work, book eight ^[106], with an afterward by Rawlins, to whom Diller had bequeathed the manuscript.
• Rawlins soon after posted (2006 and 2007) the results ^[107] of his years of researches into the "Geographia":
• Redating Marinus of Tyre, Ptolemy's cited source for the bulk of the work.
• Tyre is absent from book 8, so Marinus did not author it.
• The only two zero longitudes of Ptolemy's corpus, the Blessed Islands and Alexandria, are nowhere cited as such in prefatory book one of the "Geographia".
• Book one never mentions Alexandria at all, nor gives any place's absolute longitude.
• The traditional equation of the Blessed Islands with the Canary Islands is suspect, since the earliest extant maps of the "Geographia" show islands at 0° longitude that are much more consistent with the location of the Cape Verde Islands.
• Primary cities' "Geographia" latitudes show errors many times larger than ancient astronomers' knowledge of their geographical latitudes because^[108] the former were computed by spherical trigonometry from astrological manuals' crudely rounded climata.
• Ptolemy's 1st projection of the inhabited world cannot be made to fit the symmetric rectangle he cites.
• This projection is computationally based upon an averaging process of which he was not aware.
• Sign errors in latitude caused ancient maps' elimination of the Pacific Ocean.
• Identification of "Cattigara" (Columbus's goal) with Saigon and "Acathara" with Hanoi, near the most remote region of the "Geographia".

The Greek geographer Strabo in a 16th century engraving. ... Eratosthenes (Greek ; 276 BC - 194 BC) was a Greek mathematician, geographer and astronomer. ... In astronomy, Axial tilt is the inclination angle of a planets rotational axis in relation to a perpendicular to its orbital plane. ... The cantilever spar of this cable-stay bridge, the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay, forms the gnomon of a large garden sundial The gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. ... Latitude,usually denoted symbolically by the Greek letter phi, , gives the location of a place on Earth north or south of the equator. ... Illumination of the Earth by the Sun on the day of equinox, (ignoring twilight). ... Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born ca. ... Pyramids of Giza in 1960s Egypt: Site of Giza or Al Jizah (top center). ... Amarna The site of Amarna (commonly known as el-Amarna or incorrectly as Tel el-Amarna; see below) (Arabic: العمارنة al-‘amārnä) is located on the east bank of the Nile River in the modern Egyptian province of al-Minya, some 58 km (38 miles) south of the city of... Thebes Thebes (, ThÄ“bai) is the Greek designation of the ancient Egyptian niwt (The) City and niwt-rst (The) Southern City. It is located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile (). Thebes was the capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome... The Geographia is Ptolemys main work besides the Almagest. ... (ca. ... “Saigon” redirects here. ... Hanoi (Vietnamese: Hà Ná»™i, Hán Tá»±: 河内)  , estimated population 3,145,300 (2005), is the capital of Vietnam. ...

Publishing controversy

In the 1980s, Rawlins had a major dispute with Michael Hoskin, editor of the Journal for the History of Astronomy, over the quality and equity of refereeing ^[109] standards at the J. H. A.. When it became clear that Hoskin was interminably sitting on a Rawlins paper already approved ^[110] by both JHA referees, accepted for publication, and advertised (Isis, March, 1982), Rawlins in 1991 founded his own journal, DIO, the International Journal of Scientific History, which soon became backed by a board ^[111] of higher scientific credentials than the Hoskin journal's. Since that time, Rawlins has used the pages of DIO both as an outlet for his and other leading academics' scholarly work and as a forum to lampoon ^[112] his rivals^[113].

References

The Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) is centre for research into both polar regions. ... Peter Matthiessen (born May 22, 1927 in New York City) is an American naturalist and author of historical fiction and non-fiction. ... Richard T. Sale {1939–?} Journalist and novelist, best known for The Blackstone Rangers (1971), a book-length investigative report on the Black P. Stone Rangers. ... Categories: People stubs | 1774 births | 1862 deaths | French physicists | French mathematicians | Members of the Acad mie fran aise ... Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre (September 19, 1749 in Amiens – August 19, 1822 in Paris) was a French mathematician and astronomer. ... Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters (September 19, 1813 – July 18, 1890) was an American astronomer, and one of the first to discover asteroids. ... John Louis Emil Dreyer (February 13, 1852 – September 14, 1926) was a Danish-Irish astronomer. ...

External links

• DIO online - A compact compendium of several hundred of Rawlins' contributions ^[114] in a broad variety of fields may be found on his website.