Book description
The extraordinary, unlikely tale of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler
and their enormous contribution to astronomy and understanding of the
cosmos is one of the strangest stories in the history of science.
Kepler was a poor, devoutly religious teacher with a genius for
mathematics. Brahe was an arrogant, extravagant aristocrat who
possessed the finest astronomical instruments and observations of the
time, before the telescope. Both espoused theories that seem
off-the-wall to modern minds, but their fateful meeting in Prague in
1600 was to change the future of science.
Set in one of the most turbulent and colourful eras in European
history, when medieval was giving way to modern, Tycho and Kepler is a
double biography of these two remarkable men.
Kitty Ferguson is the author of
Measuring the Universe: The
Historical Quest to Quantify Space
,
Prisons of Light: Black Holes
and the definitive
Stephen Hawking: His Life and Work
. She studied at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and was for
many years a successful professional musician, conducting and performing
oratorio, early music and chamber music. In 1986 she moved to England
where her husband was a Visiting Fellow and later Life Member of Clare
Hall, Cambridge University. During this and many subsequent periods of
residence at Cambridge, Kitty Ferguson audited graduated lectures and
seminars in the Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics and
got to know some of the legendary figures in those fields, including
Stephen Hawking. In 1987 she retired from music to devote herself full
time to writing about science.
