His Invention So Fertile
Subtitle: A Life of Christopher Wren
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: November 29, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 504
ISBN-13: 9780195149890
First sentence: Christopher Wren once told his friend, the antiquary and folklorist John Aubrey, that he was born in his father's parsonage house at East Knoyle in Wiltshire on Thursday 20 October 1631.
Description: "Christopher Wren (1632-1723) was the greatest architect Britain has ever known. But he was more than that. A founder of the Royal Society, he mapped the moon and the stars, investigated the problem of longitude and the rings of Saturn, and carried out groundbreaking experiments into the circulation of blood. His observations on comets, meteorology and muscular action made vital contributions to the developing ideas of Newton, Halley and Boyle.".

"His Invention So Fertile presents a complete picture of this towering genius: the Surveyor-General of the King's Works, running the nation's biggest architectural office and wrestling with corruption and interference; the pioneering anatomist; the mathematician, devising new navigational instruments and lecturing on planetary motion.".

"It also shows us the man behind the legend. Wren was married and widowed twice, he fathered a mentally handicapped child, quarrelled with his colleagues and fell foul of his employers. He scrambled over building sites and went to the theatre and drank in coffee-houses.

The book explores what it was like to be at Oxford during the Commonwealth, as a generation struggled to make sense of a society in chaos; it recreates the tensions which tore apart the court of James II; it brings to life the petty jealousies that formed an integral part of both the building world and the scientific milieu of the Royal Society."--BOOK JACKET.