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    Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries
    Unavailable
    Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries
    Unavailable
    Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries
    Ebook371 pages4 hours

    Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries

    By Joshua Gilder and Anne-Lee Gilder

    3/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Heavenly Intrigue is the fascinating, true account of the seventeenth-century collaboration between Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe that revolutionized our understanding of the universe–and ended in murder.One of history’s greatest geniuses, Kepler laid the foundations of modern physics with his revolutionary laws of planetary motion. But his beautiful mind was beset by demons. Born into poverty and abuse, half-blinded by smallpox, he festered with rage, resentment, and a longing for worldly fame. Brahe, his mentor, was a flamboyant aristocrat who had spent forty years mapping the heavens with unprecedented accuracy–but he refused to share his data with Kepler. With Brahe’s untimely death in Prague in 1601, rumors flew across Europe that he had been murdered. But it took twentieth-century forensics to uncover the poison in his remains, and the detective work of Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder to identify the prime suspect–the ambitious, envy-ridden Kepler himself. A fast-paced, true-life account that reads like a thriller, Heavenly Intrigue is a remarkable feat of historical re-creation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJun 14, 2005
    ISBN9780307275066
    Unavailable
    Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries
    Author

    Joshua Gilder

    Joshua Gilder, a former presidential speechwriter, is responsible for some of the most memorable speeches of the Reagan presidency. He has written articles for The Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, and The New Criterion. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland with his family.

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    Reviews for Heavenly Intrigue

    3/5

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    • 3/5
      Clearly, to the mass media reader, a murder mystery would be much more compelling than the science of history, let alone that of sixteenth century astronomy.Early in the book, Heavenly intrigue, the authors, Joshua and Anne-Lee Gilder, juxtapose the two astronomers, Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler, in such a way that the outcome of their accusation is inevitable: Brahe, the rich aristocrat, is murdered by Kepler, the poor man's son, who aspires the old man's position and data for financial gain.The authors never tell the reader that there are other theories about Brahe's death, involving the same means, but with another perpetrator, namely his cousin, Eric Brahe. The other flaw seems that the authors impose the modern view of scientific co-operation on the reader, while we do not know and cannot assess the exact nature of the co-operation between Brahe and Kepler.
    • 2/5
      Heavenly Intrigue is to history what the nightly news on your local Fox affiliate is to journalism. The authors take an important and complex collaboration between two astronomers and sensationalize it. They portray Johannes Kepler as devious madman bent on obtaining Tycho Brahe's observational data by any means necessary. Brahe is the hard-working aristocrat who takes Keppler under his wing. How far will Keppler go to succeed? What stunning revelations have surfaced about Brahe's death? Watch the News at 10! I would note that of the authors, one was a magazine editor and the other was a TV reporter/producer. It shows in their careless handling of facts.
    • 3/5
      This book sets forth the theory that Tycho Brahe was murdered, and that in fact, Johannes Kepler did it. Gilder traces Kepler's life and his interactions with Brahe. He makes a decent case for Kepler's motive and opportunity, as well as presenting evidence that Brahe's death was indeed murder rather than natural or accidental.