- 1610: Galileo
- 1676: Ole Rømer
- 1687: Isaac Newton
- 1781: William Herschel
- 1838: Friedrich Bessel
- 1861: William and Margaret Huggins
- 1912: Henrietta Leavitt
- 1917 Einstein
- 1920: Harlow Shapley
- 1929 Edwin Hubble
- 1948: Ralph Alpher
- 1949: Fred Hoyle
- 1963: Maarten Schmidt
- 1964: Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson
- 1978: Vera Rubin and Kent Ford
- 1989: Margaret Geller and John Huchra
- 1992: John Mather and George Smoot
- 1995: Robert Williams
- 1998: Saul Perlmutter and Brian Schmidt
- 2010: Wendy Freedman
Newtonian Telescope
Newton’s studies on light and optics showed that a piece of glass would bend the light of some colors more than others, so that any telescope using a lens would distort the image. Although he may have heard about the idea of telescopes built from curved mirrors before, he was the first to design and build such a telescope. It used a shiny metal mirror, and a small secondary mirror that diverted the cone of light to the side where an observer could view it without getting in the way of the incoming beam of light. A replica of his telescope is shown at right.