Asada Goryu

Asada Gōryū (麻田 剛立, March 10, 1734 – June 25, 1799) was a Japanese astronomer who helped to introduce modern astronomical instruments and methods into Japan. Asada spent much of his career in the flourishing commercial city of Osaka, where he practiced medicine for a living, taking over his father's practice as official physician in 1767.[1] Because of the Japanese government's policy of seclusion, Western scientific theory was generally available only through obsolete Chinese works edited by Jesuit missionaries in China. Yet Asada managed to construct sophisticated mathematical models of celestial movements and is sometimes credited with the independent discovery of Kepler's third law.

In this Japanese name, the family name is Asada.

The crater Asada on the Moon is named after him.

References

1. Hockey, Thomas (2009). The Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers. Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-387-31022-0. Retrieved August 22, 2012.

Further reading

• http://www12.plala.or.jp/m-light/Nomenclature.htm (in Japanese)
• Nakayama, Shigeru (1970). "Asada Gōryū". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 1. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 310–314. ISBN 0-684-10114-9.