Charles Thomas Kowal (November 8, 1940 – November 28, 2011) was an American astronomer known for his observations and discoveries in the Solar System. As a staff astronomer at Caltech's Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar observatories between 1961 and 1984, he found the first of a new class of Solar System objects, the Centaurs, discovered two moons of the planet Jupiter, and discovered or co-discovered a number of asteroids, comets and supernovae. He was awarded the James Craig Watson Medal for his contributions to astronomy in 1979.

In the 1960s, Kowal observed with the Palomar 48" Schmidt telescope, contributing observations to noted cosmologist Fritz Zwicky's six-volume Catalogue of Galaxies and of Clusters of Galaxies. Kowal also began to search for Type Ia supernovae in other galaxies, in an effort led by Zwicky to calibrate the magnitudes of these exploding stars so that they could be used as standard candles, reliable measures of the distance of their host galaxies (work which in the present has led to accurate measurements of the expansion of the universe). In the course of these Palomar supernovae surveys with the 48" Schmidt, Kowal personally discovered 81 supernovae.

Kowal [ˈkɔval] is a town in Włocławek County, Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland, with 3,478 inhabitants (2004).

The town is the birthplace of Casimir III, King of Poland (born in 1310).

Kowal is also a common last name in the Ukraine, which means Smith.

Coordinates: 52°32′N 19°10′E / 52.533°N 19.167°E / 52.533; 19.167

Charles or Chuck Thomas may refer to:

Wayne Barrett is an American journalist. He was an investigative reporter and senior editor for the Village Voice for over 20 years. He is currently a fellow with the Nation Institute and contributor to Newsweek.

He is the author of many articles and books about politicians, especially New York City figures such as Ed Koch, Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani. He is a major interviewee in Kevin Keating's 2006 documentary Giuliani Time. He is also on the adjunct faculty of the Columbia Journalism School.

Uncle Tom is the title character of Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The phrase "Uncle Tom" has also become an epithet for a person who is slavish and excessively subservient to perceived authority figures, particularly a black person who behaves in a subservient manner to white people; or any person perceived to be a participant in the oppression of their own group.

At the time of the novel's initial publication in 1851 Uncle Tom was a rejection of the existing stereotypes of minstrel shows; Stowe's melodramatic story humanized the suffering of slavery for White audiences by portraying Tom as a Christlike figure who is ultimately martyred, beaten to death by a cruel master because Tom refuses to betray the whereabouts of two women who escape from slavery. Stowe reversed the gender conventions of slave narratives by juxtaposing Uncle Tom's passivity against the daring of three African American women who escape from slavery.

The novel was both influential and commercially successful, published as a serial from 1851-1852 and as a book from 1852 onward. An estimated 500,000 copies had sold worldwide by 1853, including unauthorized reprints. Senator Charles Sumner credited Uncle Tom's Cabin for the election of Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln himself reportedly quipped that Stowe had triggered the American Civil War.Frederick Douglass praised the novel as "a flash to light a million camp fires in front of the embattled hosts of slavery". Despite Douglass's enthusiasm, an anonymous 1852 reviewer for William Lloyd Garrison's publication The Liberator suspected a racial double standard in the idealization of Uncle Tom: