Clifford Cunningham

Clifford J. Cunningham is a Canadian-born astronomer and author of numerous books on asteroids. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Waterloo in 1976; upon enrollment, at age 15, he was the youngest student ever to attend UW.^[1] In 1991 he earned his BA in Classical Studies. For his book Introduction to Asteroids (1988) and development of The Minor Planet Index to Scientific Papers (currently on the small bodies node of the Planetary Data System managed by NASA), an asteroid was named in his honour. Asteroid 4276 was named Clifford. ^[2]He is a contributing editor to Mercury magazine (since 2001), and a contributor to The Astronomical Calendar (1988-2013). In 2013 he became affiliated with NARIT, the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand. In 2016 he was appointed associate editor of the Journal of Astronomical History & Heritage, and in 2014 a contributor to Encyclopædia Britannica.^[3] He earned his PhD in the history of astronomy at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia in 2015.

After years of research, Dr. Cunningham finally discovered who actually coined the word 'asteroid'. Although 'asteroid' has been attributed to the famous astronomer William Herschel, Cunningham found evidence that it was actually proposed by Greek expert Charles Burney, Jr., the son of a friend of Herschel.^[4] In 2014 he discovered a previously unrecognised allusion to the aurora borealis in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Publications

• Discovery of the Missing Correspondence between Carl Friedrich Gauss and the Rev. Nevil Maskelyne (2004)

Annals of Science 61 (4), pg. 469-480. <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00033790310001660164>

• How the First Dwarf Planet Became the Asteroid Ceres (2009)

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage vol. 12 (3), pg. 240-248.

• The Attribution of Classical Deities in the Iconography of Giuseppe Piazzi (2011)

Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 14(2), 129-135.

• Giuseppe Piazzi: the controversial discovery and loss of Ceres in 1801. (2011)

Journal for the History of Astronomy, 42, part 3, 283-306.

• Olbers’s Planetary Explosion Hypothesis. (2013)

Journal for the History of Astronomy, 44, 187-205.

• Classical Deities in Astronomy: The Employment of Verse to Commemorate the Discovery of the Planets Uranus, Ceres, Pallas, Juno and Vesta. (2013).

Culture and Cosmos. Special issue: Literature and the Stars, 17, 3-29.

• Discovery of the origin of the word “asteroid” and the Related Terms “asteroidal” “planetoid” “planetkin” “planetule” and “cometoid.” (2015)

Studia Etymologica Cracoviensia, 20, 47-62.

• Milton's Paradise Lost: Previously Unrecognized Allusions to the Aurora Borealis, and a Solution to the Comet Conundrum in Book 2. (2016).

Renaissance and Reformation, 39(1).

References

• Introduction to Asteroids (1988) published by Willmann-Bell Inc., Richmond, Virginia. ISBN 0-943396-16-6
• Discovery of the The First Asteroid Ceres (2016), published by Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-21776-5
• Early Investigations of Ceres, and the Discovery of Pallas (2016), published by Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-28813-0
• Studies of Pallas in the Early Nineteenth Century (2017), published by Springer.
• The Collected Correspondence of Baron Franz Xaver von Zach; 7 volumes published between 2004 and 2009*

Notes