The Most Famous
ASTRONOMERS from South Africa
This page contains a list of the greatest South African Astronomers. The pantheon dataset contains 531 Astronomers, 1 of which were born in South Africa. This makes South Africa the birth place of the 51st most number of Astronomers behind Indonesia and Mexico.
Top 1
The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary South African Astronomers of all time. This list of famous South African Astronomers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.
1. Ernest Leonard Johnson (1891 - 1977)
With an HPI of 44.35, Ernest Leonard Johnson is the most famous South African Astronomer. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages on wikipedia.
Ernest Leonard Johnson (1891–1977) was a South African astronomer and a former staff member of the Union Observatory in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is known for the discovery of 18 asteroids between 1946–1951, as well as several comets. On 25 August 1949, he discovered 48P/Johnson, a periodic comet expected to pass no closer than 1.2 to 1.3 AU from our planet in 2025. Johnson received the "Donohoe Comet Medal" twice: 40 before retiring in 1956. He died in 1977.
Pantheon has 1 people classified as astronomers born between 1891 and 1891. Of these 1, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased astronomers include Ernest Leonard Johnson.
