The Crawford Project is a collaborative digital initiative between the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, and the historians of science at The University of Edinburgh. The project will promote the study of rare texts in medieval and early modern astronomy held by the Crawford Collection housed at the Royal Observatory. One example of the Crawford’s holdings is a copy of the first edition of Copernicus, De Revolutionibus (1543), that was owned and annotated by Erasmus Reinhold, one of the leading astronomers of the Wittenberg circle.

Coordinators of the Crawford Project at the University of Edinburgh are Dr Monica Azzolini and Dr John Henry.

Project activities began in 2009. Lectures by Robert Westman, Owen Gingerich, Adam Mosley and John Brown are available on the Events section of the website. For more information, see the Crawford Project website.

Some astronomical images available in the image galleries of the History of Science Collections are listed here. The OU History of Science Collections’ copy of Copernicus (1543), for example, was annotated by another important circle of mid-16th century astronomers, led by Offusius in Paris. Whereas the Wittenberg circle throws light upon the initial Lutheran reception of Copernicus, the Offusius circle offers insight into the initial reception of Copernicus by Catholics. It is available here in its entirety, with extensive annotations.