Heavenly Intrigue
Subtitle: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: May 18, 2004
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780385508445
First sentence: THE CROWDS OF PRAGUE CITIZENS SO THRONGED THE STREETS THAT IT WAS AS IF THE FUNERAL PROCESSION WERE MAKING ITS WAY BETWEEN TWO solid walls of humanity.
Description: "Johannes Kepler changed forever our understanding of the universe with his three laws of planetary motion. He demolished the ancient model of planets moving in circular orbits and laid the foundation for the universal law of gravitation, setting physics on the course of revelation it follows to this day. Kepler was one of the greatest astronomers of all time. Yet if it hadn't been for the now lesser-known Tycho Brahe, the man for whom Kepler apprenticed, Kepler would be a mere footnote in today's science books. Brahe was the Imperial Mathematician at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague and the most famous astronomer of his era. He was one of the first great systematic empirical scientists and one of the earliest founders of the modern scientific method. His forty years of planetary observations - an unparalleled treasure of empirical data - contained the key to Kepler's historic breakthrough. But those observations would become available to Kepler only after Brahe's death. This history portrays the turbulent collaboration between these two astronomers at the turn of the seventeenth century and their shattering discoveries that would mark the transition from medieval to modern science."--BOOK JACKET.