num_pages: 624
description: Everything Sir Christopher Wren undertook, he envisaged on a grander scale -- bigger, better, more enduring than anything that had gone before. A versatile genius who could have pursued a number of brilliant careers with equal virtuosity, he was a mathematical prodigy, an accomplished astronomer, a skillful anatomist, and a founder of the Royal Society. Eventually, he made a career in what he described disparagingly in later life as "Rubbish" -- the architecture, design, and construction of public buildings. Through the prism of Wren's tumultuous life and brilliant intellect, historian Lisa Jardine unfolds the vibrant, extraordinary emerging new world of late-seventeenth-century science and ideas.
language: English
title: On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life and Tumultuous Times of Sir Christopher Wren
titlecomplete: On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life and Tumultuous Times of Sir Christopher Wren
characters: Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, Robert Hooke, Samuel Hartlib, John Aubrey, John Wallis, Sir Robert Murray, William III of England and II of Scotland, John Wilkins, Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, Isaac Newton, Stephen Fox, Gilbert Sheldon, Oliver Cromwell, John Evelyn, Elias Ashmole, Jonas Moore, Henry Oldenburg, Samuel Pepys, William Brouncker, 2nd Viscount Brouncker, Charles Scarborough, Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Nicholas Hawksmoor, William Petty, Mary II of England, Scotland and Ireland, John Flamsteed, Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland, James II of England and VII of Scotland
genres: History, Art, Architecture, Science, Biography Memoir, World History, Biography, Nonfiction, British Literature
ratings_count: 90
publisher: Harper Perennial