Ellipse

In a narrative of history and science. J.P. McEvoy recovers Kepler as the first astronomer and the man who unlocked the secret of planetary motion that would change the way we looked at the Universe forever.

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In the style of Longitude, a gripping narrative of history and science. J P McEvoy recovers Kepler as the first astronomer and the man who unlocked the secret of planetary motion that would change the way we looked at the Universe forever. In 1608, Johannes Kepler discovered the shape of the orbit of the planet Mars around the sun. And thus was man's view of the Universe transformed. The heavenly bodies had finally given up their secret. Planetary orbits are not circular as the ancient world 'intuitively' believed, but an ellipse. It was a discovery that would influence the birth of modern astronomy. Yet Kepler would remain an obscure figure in history. Without Kepler there could have been no Newton. Galileo would not have been able to make his judgements on the universe. Kepler's model paved the way for Newton's breakthrough 80 years later: equations to describe the motion of the planets within their elliptical orbits. Yet Kepler has been ignored by historians and scientist alike. Many claimed he was a mystic, others ignored his work completely, Newton himself refused to acknowledge Kepler.
Here, J P McEvoy reclaims the first astronomer's position as one of the greatest thinkers of his time. Behind Kepler stood another giant of science, Tycho Brahe, noble, obsessive, whose astonishingly accurate observations, from the palace of Uraniborg and in Prague, of the position of the planets in the heavens gave Kepler the material to formulate his theory. Combining new research with gripping story telling, McEvoy recounts the interconnected stories of two of the great men of the scientific revolution and the discovery of one of the most extraordinary ideas in the universe. For all fans of LONGITUDE, this is a classic narrative of history, triumph against adversity and monumental scientific discovery.