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The recognition that physical space (or space-time) is curved is a product ofthe general theory of relativity, such as dramatically shown by the 1919 solareclipse measurements. However, the mathematical possibility of non-Euclideangeometries was recognized by Gauss more than a century earlier, and during thenineteenth century mathematicians developed the pioneering ideas of Gauss,Lobachevsky, Bolyai and Riemann into an elaborate branch of generalizedgeometry. Did the unimaginative physicists and astronomers ignore the newgeometries? Were they considered to be of mathematical interest only untilEinstein entered the scene? This paper examines in detail the attempts in theperiod from about 1830 to 1910 to establish links between non-Euclideangeometry and the physical and astronomical sciences, including attempts to findobservational evidence for curved space. Although there were but fewcontributors to "non-Euclidean astronomy," there were more than usuallysupposed. The paper looks in particular on a work of 1872 in which the Leipzigphysicist K. F. Zoellner argued that the universe is closed in accordance withRiemann's geometry.

Geometry and Astronomy: Pre-Einstein Speculations of Non-Euclidean Space