Tycho and Kepler: The Unlikely Partnership That Forever Changed Our Understanding of the Heavens

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On his deathbed in 1601, the Danish nobleman and greatest naked-eye astronomer, Tycho Brahe, begged his young colleague, Johannes Kepler, "Let me not seem to have lived in vain." For more than thirty years— mostly in his native Denmark and then in Prague under the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II— Tycho had meticulously observed the movements of the planets and the positions of the stars. From these observations he developed his Tychonic system of the universe— a highly original, if incorrect, ...

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Hard Cover NEW INVENTORY SALE! Set in a singularly turbulent and colorful era in European history, at the turning point when medieval gave way to modern, Tycho & Kepler is both ... a highly original dual biography and a masterful recreation of how science advances. From Tycho's fabulous Uraniborg Observatory on an island off the Danish coast to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II; from the religious conflict of the Thirty Years' War that rocked all of Europe to Kepler's extraordinary leaps of understanding, Ferguson recounts a fascinating interplay of science and religion, politics and personality. Her insights recolor the established characters of Tycho and Kepler, and her book opens a rich window onto our place in the universe. Read more Show Less

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Tycho and Kepler: The Unlikely Partnership that Forever Changed our Understanding of the Heavens

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Overview

On his deathbed in 1601, the Danish nobleman and greatest naked-eye astronomer, Tycho Brahe, begged his young colleague, Johannes Kepler, "Let me not seem to have lived in vain." For more than thirty years— mostly in his native Denmark and then in Prague under the patronage of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II— Tycho had meticulously observed the movements of the planets and the positions of the stars. From these observations he developed his Tychonic system of the universe— a highly original, if incorrect, scheme that attempted to reconcile the ancient belief that the Earth stood still with Nicolaus Copernicus's revolutionary rearrangement of the solar system some fifty years earlier. Tycho knew that Kepler, the brilliant young mathematician he had engaged to interpret his findings, believed in Copernicus's arrangement, in which all the planets circled the Sun; and he was afraid his system— the product of a lifetime of effort to explain how the universe worked— would be abandoned.

In point of fact, it was. From his study of Tycho's observations came Kepler's stunning three Laws of Planetary Motion— ever since the cornerstone of cosmology and our understanding of the heavens. Yet, as Kitty Ferguson reveals, neither of these giant figures would have his reputation today without the other. The story of how their lives and talents were fatefully intertwined is one of the more memorable sagas in the long history of science.

Set in a singularly turbulent and colorful era in European history, at the turning point when medieval gave way to modern, Tycho & Kepler is both a highly original dual biography and a masterful recreation of how science advances. From Tycho's fabulous Uraniborg Observatory on an island off the Danish coast to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II; from the religious conflict of the Thirty Years' War that rocked all of Europe to Kepler's extraordinary leaps of understanding, Ferguson recounts a fascinating interplay of science and religion, politics and personality. Her insights recolor the established characters of Tycho and Kepler, and her book opens a rich window onto our place in the universe.

Read More Show Less

Editorial Reviews

The Los Angeles Times
In Tycho & Kepler, we are given the sense of science as a quintessentially human activity, conducted not by disembodied spirits squirreled away in ivory towers but by living, breathing and distinctly idiosyncratic subjects. In reality we have two books here — and one of them is an absolute triumph. It is clear that in her intertwined tales Ferguson's heart lies chiefly with Tycho. He is her pole star, the man whose character broke across the chasm of years to speak to her directly, and it is this book that rivals Longitude. — Kitty Ferguson
Publishers Weekly
The story of how Copernicus replaced the prevailing geocentric view of the universe with his heliocentric model is a familiar one. Less familiar are Tycho Brahe's contributions to astronomy and his influence on Johannes Kepler, who revolutionized 17th-century thinking about planetary movements. Science writer Ferguson's intellectual and cultural biography of these two seminal scientists provides a delightful, detailed look into the ways that each man developed his ideas about the universe. Brahe, a Danish nobleman, developed a variety of instruments for observing the heavens. In his observatory off the coast of Denmark, he built a magnificent armillary-an instrument that allowed him to construct his theory that Venus and Mercury orbit the Sun while the Sun and the outer planets orbit the unmoving Earth. In 1600, Brahe took on a brilliant young student named Kepler, whom Brahe asked to carry on his own work after his death. Though indebted to Brahe for his instruments and his detailed charts of the stars, ultimately Kepler departed from Brahe's views, confirming instead Copernicus's theory that all the planets orbit the Sun. More famously, he discovered that the planets had elliptical rather than circular orbit. Ferguson (Measuring the Universe) paints her picture of Brahe and Kepler in broad strokes, placing them among the political intrigues of their times and the conflict between religion and science. Her biography offers glimpses of two men completely enamored of the beauty of the stars and planets and their attempts to describe the world through the eyes of this great love. 16 color and 30 b&w illus., 2 maps. Library of Science Book Club alternate selection. (Jan. 30) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
KLIATT
Tycho was an astronomer who invented instruments that improved observations of the heavens and used them to make the most accurate observations ever recorded. Kepler was a mathematician who used Tycho's observations to create precise formulas and tables that describe the movements of heavenly bodies. Both men lived in the small countries and cities of Europe from the latter half of the 16th century to 30 years into the 17th. To write this dual biography, Ferguson had to have a thorough knowledge of their science and its effects, of their families, and of the political, cultural, social, and physical environment of their time and place. Tycho and Kepler lived in an era of religious upheaval, when Calvinism challenged the fragile division into Protestant and Catholic spheres of influence. Plague and other disorders, which often precipitated early death, and accusations of witchcraft spread fear. Rigid class divisions dominated social interaction. It was also a time when universities provided a rigorous education to sons of the nobility. Religious authorities at this time did not, apparently, protest the content of the scientists' work. Ferguson skillfully weaves it all together, providing the reader with the story of one man, then the other, telling how their fortuitous collaboration extended human knowledge. Though the science material is basically nontechnical, the difficulty level of the book is such that it is accessible only to mature high school students. Science teachers, most specifically teachers of mathematics and astronomy, will find it a rich source of cultural background and anecdotes that will enable them to help students appreciate at what cost the basic knowledge of theirdisciplines was gained. Superb science biography. KLIATT Codes: A—Recommended for advanced students and adults. 2002, Walker, 402p. illus. notes. bibliog. index., Ages 17 to adult.
—Edna Boardman
Library Journal
Ferguson (Measuring the Universe) continues to wield her gift as a popular science writer in this double biography of Renaissance astronomers Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler. This watershed relationship in the history of science is fascinating for several reasons. Ferguson's subjects lived and worked during a turbulent time when medieval thought was starting to give way to modern concepts and a scientific explanation of the world. In his own way, each epitomized the new scientific method of careful observation of the facts (Tycho) and their interpretation or explanation based on rational, rather than religious, thought (Kepler). In addition, Tycho's and Kepler's lives are interesting in their own right. As with her earlier books, Ferguson has a wonderful ability not only to explain her topic and its significance but also to render the historical background in such a way that the participants do not seem to be either incredibly farsighted prophets or quaint characters fumbling for explanations. Highly recommended for academic and public libraries.-James Olson, Northeastern Illinois Univ. Lib., Chicago Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Science writer Ferguson (Measuring the Universe, 1999, etc.) fully illuminates a 17th-century collaboration that launched a true understanding of the solar system. At their first meeting in 1600 in Prague, Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe was 53, German mathematician and teacher Johannes Kepler just 28. Brahe was a renowned "naked eye" astronomer, having observed and accumulated data on planetary positions and movements for more than three decades; Kepler was obsessed with the idea that God’s universe must be structured from regular geometric and harmonic patterns that numbers could ultimately reveal. There were a few commonalities: both had leaned away from Catholicism, and both had earned favors casting "calendars" (horoscopes) with astrological portents in which neither really believed, although Brahe consulted with kings, Kepler with burgomasters. With intimate knowledge of both the great Dane and the obscure Lutheran (not nearly as reticent, Ferguson asserts, as some accounts have held), the author masterfully follows each across the turbulent stage of northern Europe after the Reformation to their common destiny: final obliteration of the thousand-year-old tenet of Ptolemaic astronomy, long rooted in ecclesiastical belief, that the Sun and its planets orbit Earth. Brahe is in decline, while Kepler’s fixation on fitting planetary orbits within geometric solids is, we now know, close to a nutball scheme. Yet little more than a decade later, after Brahe died in 1604 pleading to his assistant, "Let me not have lived in vain," Kepler produced his immutable Laws of Planetary Motion. "Kepler had become a virtuoso in the use of Tycho’s observations," Ferguson observes, "devising ingenious waysto exploit their unique accuracy and comprehensiveness. Such mastery of the creative nexus between observation and theory has seldom been achieved and never surpassed in the entire history of science." Meticulously instructive both on a scientific revolution and the personalities who achieved it.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780802713902
  • Publisher: Walker & Company
  • Publication date: 3/28/2002
  • Pages: 416
  • Product dimensions: 5.86 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 1.43 (d)

Meet the Author

Kitty Ferguson first became interested in mathematics, physics, and cosmology as a child growing up in Texas. After graduating from the Juillard School and enjoying a career as a professional musician, she decided to devote herself to the writing of science. She is the author of Measuring the Universe, The Fire in the Equations, Prisons of Light, and Stephen Hawking: Quest for a Theory of Everything.

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Table of Contents

Map: Tycho's Denmark ix
Map: Tycho and Kepler's Europe xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Prologue 1
1. Legacies 7
2. Aristocrat by Birth, Astronomer by Nature 24
3. Behavior Unbecoming a Nobleman 39
4. Having the Best of Several Universes 57
5. The Isle of Hven 77
6. Worlds Apart 91
7. A Palace Observatory 105
8. Adelberg, Maulbronn, Uraniborg 126
9. Contriving Immortality 140
10. The Undermining of Human Endeavor 153
11. Years of Discontent 169
12. Geometry's Universe 181
13. Divine Right and Earthly Machination 200
14. Converging Paths 213
15. Contact 231
16. Prague Opens Her Arms 243
17. A Dysfunctional Collaboration 252
18. "Let Me Not Seem to Have Lived in Vain" 266
19. The Best of Times 286
20. Astronomia Nova 304
21. The Wheel of Fortune Creaks Around 321
22. An Unlikely Harmony 337
23. Measuring the Shadows 352
Appendix 1 Angular Distance 359
Appendix 2 Vocabulary of Astronomy 361
Appendix 3 Kepler's Use of Tycho's Observations of Mars 363
Notes 369
Bibliography 385
Art Credits 389
Index 391
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