Description
Traces the collaboration of revolutionary astronomers Tyco Brahe and Johannes Kepler, documenting how their seventeenth-century work during the Counter-Reformation era established current understanding in physics, and analyzing recent forensic evidence that Kepler may have murdered Brahe.
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Tycho Brahe was rich, famous, a fabulous host, and brilliant. Johannes Kepler was poor, unpopular, a potion-maker, and almost as brilliant as he wanted to be. Kepler worked for Brahe as his assistant, and on Brahe's death took over his notebooks. Kepler later achieved a stardom in cosmology that survives today. However, according to recent forensic investigations, Brahe died of acute mercury poisoning, and bequeathed his notebooks to his family hours before his agonizing death. Gilder and Gilder, journalists, investigate the very real possibility that Kepler, unable to break free from his low origins and high ambitions, poisoned Brahe and stole his ideas. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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