Overview

The astrolabe is one of the most intriguing of all early scientific instruments. Invented by the Greeks, the design and construction of the astrolabe remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years as it passed through the Arabic, Indian, Persian, and Medieval European cultures. The astrolabe was the starting-point for the design of many other types of calculating and observing instruments in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. With 53 astrolabes, the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich houses one of the largest collections in the world. This number presents a fair balance between the Eastern (30) and the Western (23) instruments, with some exceptionally fine highlights in each group. This beautifully-produced large format book catalogues the astrolabes in the National Maritime Museum collection, and includes accompanying essays written by world experts in their fields. Published in series with 'Globes at Greenwich' and 'Sundials at Greenwich', this prestigious catalogue will appeal to collectors of such scientific instruments as well as academic historians of science.

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9780198530695

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The catalogue has been beautifully presented, with the information clear and accessible Hester Higton, British Journal for the History of Science

Author Information

Koenraad van Cleempoel studied art history at the Catholic University of Louvain and the Completense University of Madrid. He obtained his doctoral degree from the Warburg Institute (London) and afterwards worked as the Sackler Research Fellow at the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich) where he catalogued the astrolabes described in this volume. He was research assistant of the Institute for the History of Science at the Wolfgang Goethe Universitat in Frankfurt am Main. He now lives in Antwerpen where he is a member of staff of the Higher Institute of Architectural Sciences, Henry van de Velde. In 2001 he was awarded the tri-annual price 'Frans Jonkheere' for his Ph.D. thesis on the 'Aspects of the Production of Scientific Instruments from the Louvain School, 1530 to 1600'. Since then he is also an appointed member of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts in Brussels.

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