High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Roger Joseph Boscovich or Ru er Bo kovi (see names in other languages; 18 May 1711 13 February 1787) was a physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher, diplomat, poet, Jesuit, and according to some a polymath from Ragusa (today Dubrovnik, in Croatia), who lived for a time in France, England and some Italian states. He is famous for his atomic theory and made many important contributions to astronomy, including the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position. In 1753 he also discovered the absence of atmosphere on the Moon.