For one thing, they are two academic studies that even today are advanced importantly by amateurs. In this thread, I am keeping to Astronomy and Numismatics. Other sciences are commemorated and we can discuss Charles Darwin, Oswaldo Cruz, and many others in different threads, if you wish. Also, it is a judgment call as to whether Einstein, Newton, and others are merely "astronomers" or also "physicists" or "mathematicians." But let us not split hairs... Astronomical Symbols on Ancient and Medieval Coins by Marshall Faintich; McFarland & Co., 2008, 232 pages, $55.00 Working with fellow student Bradford S. Wade, whom I met in “Ethics in Physics,” at Eastern Michigan University, I placed reviews of this book in The Numismatist (Vol 124 No. 1, January 2011), The Mich-Matist (Vol XLVI No. 4, Autumn 2010), E-Sylum (Volume 13, Number 45, November 7, 2010, Article 4), The Centinel (Vol. 58 No. 3, Fall 2010), The Celator, and the Bulletin of the Society for the History of Astronomy (Issue 21, Autumn 2011). They ran in a range; and as a consequence of our criticism, we exchanged some emails with the author who demanded retractions which we did not publish. We stand by our work – as he stands by his. This is science. Overall, the book is important and valuable. It does have its weak points. They do not detract from the major thesis: astronomical events appear recorded in the long history of coinage. (See the review on my blog here: https://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/06/astronomical-symbols-on-ancient-and.html See Marshall Faintich's pages at "Symbolic Messengers" here http://www.faintich.net/primer.htm If you want to build a collection of astronomical events recorded on coins, this is a place to start. In the Ancients forum, you can find discussions of the Moon and Stars themes of Roman coins. It would be a prediction based on this book that the Septimus Severus and Julia Domna coins of 184-185 from Syria were purposely intended to record an actual event, a close passage in the morning sky of the Pleiades and the Moon.
Bundesrepublik Deutschland ("West Germany") 1973 Commemorative (reverse) the 500th anniversary of the birth of Copernicus.
South Korea has a few astronomy-related pieces: 1965 Die Trial of the Silla Dynasty-era (circa 57 BC to 935 AD) Cheomseongdae astronomical observatory. "New Millennium" (2000-Won) commemorative coin.
Two examples of Antioch bronzes 1st century AD often cited as a "Biblical" coin because the array of the star in the Ram indicates the astrological signs of a New Age. In other words, it was the "star in the East" that brought the Wise Men to Jesus. And a Roman denarius of Trajan. On the reverse, at the feet of Providentia is a globe. But whether it is a terrestrial globe or a representation of the heavens, it shows the track of the Ecliptic divided into sectors for the Zodiac.
2017 UK commemorative 50 pence reverse. According to en.numista.com: "Design based upon elements of Proposition 11 in Book One of Newton's Principia Mathematica." The Royal Mint does not provide that detail. (See https://www.royalmint.com/discover/...ifications/fifty-pence-coin/sir-isaac-newton/). The proposition is to find the law of motion for an ellipse.
Roger Boskovic was an 18th century mathematician and philosopher. (See Wikipedia here.) Standing on Newton's shoulders, he developed a geometric solution for finding the orbit of a planet from three observations, also for finding the equator of a rotating body from observations of three points on its surface. This note was a 1 kuna when Croatia was first independent from the former Yugoslavia. But as you can see, the wars of liberation against Serbia took a toll.
