Tycho and Kepler: The Strange Partnership That Revolutionised Science [Paperback]

As a physics teacher, I like to use the background on figures from scientific history to try to generate some interest from my students. When teaching Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, I always make sure to talk about the contributions of Tycho Brahe. To my mind, the relationship between Brahe and Kepler is one of the earliest examples of the experimentalist/theorist relationship and, unfortunately, it is the experimentalist who is often lost to history while the theorist is remembered. I teach my students the names of both Brahe and Kepler as a small effort to rectify this unfairness. Kitty Ferguson has made a larger effort with this book and I hope she is able to reach a large readership.

Ms. Ferguson has at least given herself a chance by writing a very good book. Her prose is very engaging. She is detailed both science and biography and yet she is quite easy to understand even for those without a scientific background. And she has two extraordinarily interesting characters to talk about--Brahe, the rather spoiled Danish aristocrat who brought glory to himself against the odds in a "ignoble" profession by becoming the greatest naked eye astronomer in history, and Kepler, the poor German Protestant school teacher who had a knack for doing mathematics and finding trouble.

Though I knew the broad outline of Brahe and Kepler's story, I was surprised again and again by all I did not know. I may not be able to incorporate it all into my classes but I am glad to know the story myself. It is always interesting to see how the great ideas came into being, mostly through more fits, starts and mistakes than most people realize. Anyone interested in scientific history would be foolish to pass up reading this book.

Tycho Brahe, a Danish nobleman, and Johannes Kepler, commoner, crossed paths during one of the times when scientific thought and philosophy was growing by huge leaps--the 17th Century or Age of Reason. Their story is set against the backdrop of the Counter-Reformation and some unsettled times in European history, not to mention the development of major ideas of cosmology.

But what's equally interesting are the life and times of these two scientists in the context of 17th Century daily life. Ferguson researches her subject and provides the reader with a story that is a cross between a soap opera and a historical fiction novel. Brahe's castle and observatory were not only architecturally interesting, the life inside the walls was fraught with nasty doings. Brahe, by all reports, had quite the temper. He may have even invented the modern day graduate student-slavey; he kept associates of lower social rank under his thumb for years, paid them a pittance, assigned them menial work, stole their intellectual property and literally imprisoned them in his palace.

If you have an interest in astronomy or philosophy or just plain European history from this era, you should read this. I couldn't put it down. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Tycho & Kepler - The Unlikely Friendship that Forever Changed Our Understanding of the Heavens is, for the most part, an excellent novel and easy read. Although it is a little confusing and dry at the times when complex astronomical concepts are being explained, they are outweighed by the wealth of historical accounts and gratuitous, but juicy tidbits. For instance, besides explaining the extensive instruments that Tycho built, Ferguson offers that he was also the first Dane to write a poem in Latin, that he had a twin that died at birth, and his aunt and uncle kidnapped him from his parents who wanted a girl and didn't much care. As for Kepler, not only did he develop the Harmonic theory, but had a miserable marriage, a mother accused and tried for witchcraft, and was the first author of a science fiction novel. Kitty Ferguson thus tells the life stories of the astronomers Tycho and Kepler in an informative, educational, yet narrative and interesting way. She effectively spans the 20-year gap between Tycho and Kepler by beginning the book describing Tycho's childhood and indeed his life exclusively up until the advent of a comet on December 27, 1571. Ferguson explains that, when Tycho saw the comet, he was out at one of his 60 manmade fish ponds on his estate at the Danish Isle of Hven, catching fish for dinner that evening. Meanwhile Kepler saw the same comet, but he was only five, and it was during a rare warm moment that he shared with his mother on a hilltop in Leonberg. Thus Kepler enters the story. For the rest of the book, Ferguson fluidly integrates the two men's lives, switching back and forth in an understandable, connected way. She eventually merges the two stories in a dynamic, functional manner, and shows how they used each other, and that many of their final results were synthesized versions of their combined efforts. Basically, Tycho provided excruciatingly accurate data that Kepler confirmed mathematically and extrapolated on. Kepler could have never figured out all that he did with out Tycho's data; he had bad eyesight and could not observe the sky he so dearly slaved for. It was because Tycho initially mistrusted Kepler that Kepler received only slight amounts of data that Kepler discovered that planetary orbits are elliptical - Tycho gave him only data on Mars, which happens to have the most extreme elliptical orbit, otherwise Kepler never would have noticed. Tycho also used Kepler to advance his own work and complete (among other things) the Rudolfine Tables, which are not merely the positions of planets, but guides to figure out what positions they are in at any time, (now, 586 years ago, or one thousand years into the future). The aptly-named chapters are elegantly punctuated with helpful pictures, like paintings of people discussed, illustrations of instruments, maps of the places mentioned, explanatory diagrams, and more. There are also obliging appendixes in the back, explaining astronomical terms (even though they are well-explained in the reading), and an index.

Just as the accomplishments of these men were great, so were their lives, which is probably why Kitty Ferguson felt compelled to tell the story of them. I would highly recommend it, even if you do not much care for astronomy.