On the shoulders of giants. Hawking S.

To give correct answers to fundamental questions about the Universe, the centuries and the courage of several scientists were needed. Nikolai Copernicus in the treatise “On the Rotation of Heavenly Spheres”, Galileo Galileo in “Dialogue about the two main systems of the world”, Johann Kepler in “Harmony of the World”, Isaac Newton in the “mathematical principles of natural philosophy” and Albert Einstein in his numerous articles on the principle of relativity The eyes opened to contemporaries to how the heavenly arch is arranged and what happens outside the visibility of the telescope. It was these works and these ideas that changed the direction of scientific thought, and earlier - they marked the transition from the Middle Ages to the present. Excerpts from original texts are supplemented by comments by Stephen Hawking, which also made up a biographical essay for each of the authors so that the reader could trace the global evolution of astrophysical views and the course of the thoughts of private genius.