| 1 | Name: | Dr. Owen Gingerich | |
| Institution: | Harvard University & Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory | ||
| Year Elected: | 1975 | ||
| Class: | 1. Mathematical and Physical Sciences | ||
| Subdivision: | 101. Astronomy | ||
| Residency: | Resident | ||
| Living? : | Deceased | ||
| Birth Date: | 1930 | ||
| Death Date: | May 28, 2023 | ||
Owen Gingerich is a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University. In 1992-93 he chaired Harvard's History of Science Department. Professor Gingerich's research interests have ranged from the recomputation of an ancient Babylonian mathematical table to the interpretation of stellar spectra. In the past four decades Professor Gingerich has become a leading authority on the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler and on Nicholas Copernicus. His publications include a 600-page monograph surveying copies of Copernicus' great book De revolutionibus, for which he was awarded the Polish government's Order of Merit in 1981; later an asteroid was named in his honor. In 2006 he published God's Universe, a volume arguing that faith and science can coexist even in considerations of the nature of life. In 1984 he won the Harvard-Radcliffe Phi Beta Kappa prize for excellence in teaching. In June 2007 he was awarded the Prix Janssen by the French Astronomical Society. He has been a member of the American Philosophical Society since 1975. In June 2017 he received Benedict Polak Prize, which he described this way: "I have just returned from Poland, where I have received the Benedict Polak Prize, which I daresay no other APS member has ever heard of. Friar Benedict the Pole was drafted in 1245 as a translator-scholar to accompany a Papal group to visit the Khan of Mongolia. The present Benedict Polak Prize was established three years ago to honor explorers in any realm of human knowledge, and is to be given each year to a Polish citizen and to a foreigner. I received this year's prize for my Copernican researches. The Polish citizen prize went to my friend Jerzy Gassowski, the archaeologist who identified Copernicus' bones in an unmarked grave under the cathedral floor in Frombork. The prizes are given in Leczyca, a small village with the founding church in Poland and the church home of Benedict the Pole. It is hard to imagine that enough citizens of Leczyca would turn up for such an occasion, but actually people came from all over Poland. The president of Poland was not present in person, but sent a citation as well as a private and specific congratulatory letter to me." | |||